Do Not Worry!

Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Shepherd's Church podcast. This is Kendall, and this is the third week in a row that we've had to record sermons online during this coronavirus outbreak, epidemic, pandemic, whatever you want to call it.

And I know that many of us are dealing very differently with this new way of life.

There's lots of opinions that are all over the place. There's lots of facts that we're not sure how to interpret.

There's lots of theories about what actually is going on. Do you have the federal view of this coming from the federal government?

You have the local state governments, which are at play. I know for the Shepherd's Church, we're represented by two different state governments.

We have people in New Hampshire, we have people in Massachusetts. And one of the things that I've noticed that is kind of common among all of us is that there's this underlying kind of worry.

There's this underlying fear that maybe things aren't going to go back to the way that they were, or maybe

I'm going to contract this virus, and as someone who has a lifetime history of asthma and of bronchitis and pneumonia, is some things that I worry about.

I think about my wife, who is currently pregnant. I wonder about, is there going to be hospital availability whenever we're going to give birth, which is in 10 or 11 weeks from now?

I know that you have things that you're considering and that you're thinking about. And this particular season of our life is prone to worry.

I mean, we're already as fallen human creatures, we're already prone to worry about everything.

We worry about our kids and whether they're going to grow up to love the Lord. We worry about our spouses and whether they're going to be safe on the highways with all of the drivers that are out there.

And we worry about sickness, health. We worry about prosperity. We worry about, are we going to make the bills on time?

Are we going to be able to pay the mortgage? So in this season of global pandemic,

I'm assuming that that worry is there. That in some way or another, if you dig down deep enough into your heart, you'll find the seed of worry in some way.

And I would just say that worry is this persistent thing.

It's this thing that our brains and our hearts naturally and actively gravitate towards without any intentional effort on our own.

We worry much like we breathe. But what I want to do today, whether you are crippled by worry or whether it's just barely there,

I think all of us have some manifestation of worry going on in our lives.

What I want to do today is I want to bring the Bible in on this. I want to see what Jesus has to say in Matthew chapter six.

And by the end of it, I want us to examine how is it that we as Christians can live without worry in this life and in this season of life, where the world around us is given over to it.

So if you will, let's start with Matthew 6 .25. And then as we work down, we're going to end at Matthew 6 .34.

So today we're going to be talking about Matthew 6 .25 through 6 .34. And if you want to open your

Bible with me, you can follow along as I read. Verse 25 begins this way.

For this reason I say to you, this is Jesus speaking, do not be worried.

Jesus is saying, do not fear, do not be anxious, and do not let your mind become preoccupied with all of the things that you cannot control.

Do not worry. In the midst of this outbreak and quarantines and pandemics, he would look at us and he would say to us, do not worry.

Do not allow that emotion into your life. Don't participate in it. Because when you do, you announce to the

Lord that I don't trust you and that I would rather live in my fear.

The word Jesus uses in this verse for worry is called merimnao. That's the

Greek word. And it comes out of the old classical Greek language, which just means to care about something, which seems reasonable, right?

Jesus, why are you telling me not to have cares? Why are you telling me not to have concerns? That is a normal and reasonable thing.

But see, that's where the word shifts a little bit. Its original meaning in the ancient

Greek world was to have cares and concerns. It was to have a normal care for something and to have a normal assessment of things.

But by the time Jesus comes along the scene, which is hundreds of years later, this word's been in circulation now for hundreds of years in the

Greek language. By the time he comes along, the word had taken on a sort of negative connotation.

It started meaning to have misplaced cares and disordered concerns. It had this sense that of someone being disproportionately troubled.

Merimnao became a sort of care, but mixed with fear and concern, which is a good definition for what worry actually is.

It is a fearful and a sinful approach to care. It's caring in sinful ways and in fearful ways.

To say that a different way, normal care is not a problem for Jesus. The Bible assumes that we're gonna have many things that we care about and that we're gonna be stewarding.

We're supposed to care about our loved ones. We're supposed to care about our jobs. We're supposed to be good stewards of all of those things, relationships and careers and everything else.

There's things that we should care about. There's things that God has given us to care about. We should care about Christ and we should care about his church and we should have passions for those things.

We should care about the world and we should care about the things that are going on in the world. We should be informed. But when those cares are infused with sin, namely fear, anxiety, dread, those things, then it's no longer healthy and godly care.

It actually becomes worry. It becomes disordered care. It becomes sickly care.

It becomes poisoned care. It becomes idolatry. And it slides into a sort of sinful preoccupation with everything but God.

It magnifies our circumstances and minimizes our God. And it becomes a sort of practical atheism where our emotions and our circumstances and everything else become larger and greater than God in our own life.

And while none of us would ever claim the charge of atheism, I'm assuming if you're a Christian, which is why you're listening to this, if you're at the

Shepherd's Church, I haven't met anyone yet who said, I'm an atheist. I hope to the

Lord that someday one of them would come so that we can preach the gospel to them. I hope that someday, maybe even this time,

I hope that someone who doesn't believe in God or isn't sure that they believe in God listens to this so that they can hear the hope of the gospel.

I pray for that. But I'm assuming that if you're listening to this, you want to trust

God. You want to give yourself to Him. You don't want to be controlled by fear and worry and dread.

But let me just tell you that our fears and our worries actually communicate that we don't really trust

God. You see, our worries operate in a sort of false reality. Either God is who

He said He is, which means that we should trust Him and our worry is not, there's no place for it.

Either we accept that or our worries and our fears are more real and therefore we cannot trust

God. You see, our worries create a false

God that really is not powerful at all. And functionally and practically, we are living our lives as emotional atheists if we give ourself over to worry.

It's in these sinful emotions that we must forcefully repent. We can't excuse them even for a moment.

We can't downplay how destructive they are to our soul. We must see this sort of rebellion for what it really is instead of tucking it away as something that's normal.

I mean, trust me, the world around you, our flesh within us, the devil who's against us, all of these things are trying to convince you that worry is a very normal thing.

If you were not worried right now, people would think you were abnormal. Everyone is worried right now.

Everyone is giving into hysteria. Everyone has given into their anxiety right now. And if you say,

I'm not worried at all, I trust the Lord, you're going to look like a fool. And I think in a lot of ways, we have sought to fit in with the world.

We don't want to look abnormal. We don't want to look like we're the only ones. So in a sense, our consciences have been seared in a way to where we think and act just like the world, even though we know that we've been delivered from it in Christ.

I mean, this is a challenging question that I asked myself earlier as I was writing this down. How often have

I wept over the things that I was worried about? How often have

I been crippled with fear over the things that I was worried about? How often have I let a situation in my life become so big that I was paralyzed and I could not move?

Instead of weeping and telling

God, I'm so sorry for my worries. See, it's so much easier for me to weep over my worries than to weep over the fact that I'm worrying and my worrying is displeasing to God.

And I just ask us all the question, when was the last time that we came in tears to the throne of grace with broken hearts, confessing to the

Lord, God, I am trying, but I just can't repent of my worries. I'm trying to give them to you. See, what

I've found in my own life, and I wonder if this is true in your life as well, it's often easier to sit in our worries, to sit in our fears, to sit in our anxieties instead of bringing them and handing them over to God and saying,

God, forgive me and help me. I don't know about you, but I end up excusing my worries and I downplay them as legitimate.

I say to myself, well, you know, I know that I should not worry. I know that, you know, the rest of the world is worrying.

I rationalize it and I compare myself with others and I say, well, anyone else who is going through this kind of pandemic right now, they would be worried too.

And I want to be normal. I don't want to be emotionally out of whack, but I almost never say to myself,

Kendall, your worries are an affront to God. You are playing with these sins and rebellions and you're making excuses for yourself instead of leaving it and laying it down at the cross of Christ and repenting from it, you are putting up with it.

You're enduring with it and justifying yourself. And Jesus doesn't actually allow that.

He doesn't suggest that we stop worrying. He doesn't give us a prescription that you could take it if you like, and you don't have to.

You can leave it on your medicine stand if you want. Jesus is commanding us not to allow fear to creep into our hearts as a command.

Why? Because fear hardens our heart to God. Fear paralyzes our trust.

It cripples us and it renders us incapable of believing God is in control of our lives. Fear and worry makes our circumstances bigger than God.

And it really says to God, I don't think you're that big. I don't think you're that strong. I don't think you're in control.

I don't think you know what you're doing. But look at what Jesus says in verse 26.

He says, dear Christian, look at the birds of the air. They don't sow, they don't reap, they don't gather in their barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them.

Are you not worth more than they? Something as practical as our food.

He's saying, aren't you more valuable than sparrows? The Lord God provides for them. Won't he provide for you? Jesus also says in verse 28 through 30, he says, and why are you worried about your clothing?

Observe how the lilies of the field, they grow. They don't toil. They don't spin. Yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all of his glory was clothed like one of these.

But if God so clothes the grass of the field, the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow it's thrown into the furnace, will he not much more clothe you,

O you of little faith? You think about things as practical as just your own clothing.

Think about food. You think about the most basic necessities of life, and Jesus is not limiting this discussion to just food and clothing.

He's saying that the problem with our worry is that it demonstrates a lack of faith in who God is. For if you knew who

God was, then you would not be worried. If you really understood who this

God was and what it means that you're a Christian, that he has saved you and rescued you from your sin by giving his son, if you understood those things, then you would not be soiled in your sin and you would not be given over to your fears and to your worries.

Because when we worry, we have forgotten who God is momentarily. And, you know, maybe

I could hand you a test and you could pass it. You could give all the right answers theologically, yes,

I know who God is, yes, I know what it means that he's in control, I understand his sovereignty, I understand his providence,

I understand his intelligence and his omniscience and his omnipotence and omnipresence, I understand all those categories.

You could hand someone a test and they could pass it, but their hearts is one of the greatest indications of whether they understand the truth or not.

Has the understanding of who God is trickled down into your heart? Has it caused you to have faith?

Has it caused you to have trust? The Bible says without faith it is impossible to please

God. Well, in the same way, I think Jesus would look to every single one of us and say, if you worry, you are demonstrating that you do not have faith and therefore it is equally impossible for you to please

God. You may have a good reason, humanly speaking, to be worrying. We all have tremendous reasons right now.

We're living in a very stressful season of life. Every day we turn on the news and it's fear and it's nothing but more people have been infected, more deaths, more hospitals are having to be opened in tents and we have a lack of ventilators and we have a lack of resources and all of this is feeding into the panic.

And from a world's perspective, you could say, yeah, I have a great reason right now to be afraid. But when you and I join in with the world and we give ourselves over to fear, then we are believing that God is not powerful enough.

We are acting like a Gentile. We are acting like a non -Christian. And we are announcing to the world that even though we believe

God was loving enough and caring enough to save us, He's not in control enough to take care of us.

In a way, it's like treating God like an illegitimate father. He was enough to have us, but not enough to care for us.

This God was enough to save us and create us, new creation, new birth. He's the one, yeah, we call him father, but he's absent.

He's not really around. He's not really providing for us. He's not really caring for us. He's an absent father who abandoned us.

That's kind of what we're saying to the world when we're crippled in fear. And when we do that, we contrive for ourselves this sort of imaginary vulnerability.

We believe that we're all alone. When God has been telling us all along that He's with us and He's there to provide for us, we end up taking things on ourselves that we don't need to take upon ourself, and we live in these sort of sinful emotions, and we start allowing our heart to be entangled in chaos and displeasure for no reason, for absolutely no reason.

Either God is who He said He is or He's not, and He said that He's right here with you.

He's available to meet your needs. He loves you enough to die for you on a cross, and if He's willing to do that, then

He's willing to get with you in the trenches right now and care for you and help you. He cares for us by giving us

His Spirit. We do not believe in a God who left us all alone to take care of ourselves. We believe in a

God who came to earth and who lived with us and died for us and then gave us

His Spirit to walk with us. We forget so easily, don't we?

Why do we allow our emotions to control us the way that they do? Why do we allow the truth of Scripture to be so easily forgotten?

I think it's because in our sin, we're enemies of God. In our hearts, we are haters of God.

We forget His Word and His promises because it doesn't yet mean enough to us for us to remember it.

When He says, I will never leave you and never forsake you, why do we forget that? When He says,

I've overcome the world, do not fear, do not lose heart, why do we forget that? It's because moment by moment, at the heart of the matter, we actually believe that we can care for ourselves better than God.

But of course we know that's not true. Look at what Jesus says in verse 27, He says, and who of you by being worried can add a single hour to his life?

For all the worrying that we do, it actually destroys our relationship with God. It does nothing at all to give us what we're actually looking for and hoping for, and it just leaves us in this powerless exercise of futility that only takes from you, but never actually gives back to you.

And I think this is why Jesus tells us instead of doing that, to live a life of faith. He says in verses 31 and 32, do not worry then saying what you will eat or what you will drink or what you will wear for the

Gentiles are eagerly seeking after these things. For your heavenly father knows that you need all of these things.

Listen to that, he knows. What Jesus is saying here is why should we be worried about all of these things when

God already knows, when God is already in control? This is what the Gentiles do.

They worry about their lives and they worry about living and dying. They worry about food and toilet paper and clothing, and they worry about all of these things.

But Christians, we do not need to worry about these things because our lives have already been bought and paid for by Christ, and this life is just the beginning.

We know that God is there for us. We know that God cares for us. We know that these worries in life are not enough to overcome the love that we have in Christ Jesus.

And let's just be completely and bluntly honest about this for a second. If God takes my life from this virus, so be it.

If I wake up in eternity tomorrow, I will wake up and see Jesus face to face, and that is so much better than everything else that's going on in this life.

I am not meant to gain my hope from this life. I'm not meant to gain my contentment from this life.

I'm not meant and you're not meant to gain our happiness from this life. If God leaves us here, then he leaves us here not to worry, not to be crippled with fear, but he leaves us here to magnify him to as many people as we possibly can for as long as we are here.

We're here to trust him and we're here to be on mission for him. We are not here to worry.

As a Christian, we are never, ever, ever in want. As a

Christian, we have everything that God determined for us to have. To worry about what we have or do not have is to look at God and to make the audacious claim,

I know what I need better than you do. I'm a better provider than you. I can take care of myself better than you can, and it's a total denial of who

God is. He's saying worry is not appropriate for a Christian, no matter how you slice it.

If we live a life filled with worry and doubt, then we are living like we're no longer Christians. We're no longer rescued.

We're no longer redeemed people. We're living like our faith is not real, like the resurrection of our

Lord and Savior never happened. We are living like there's nothing at all unique and special about being a

Christian, even though we have the spirit of power living inside of us. And unfortunately, it's also true that when we live a life of worry, we demonstrate to the own looking world that we profess

God with our lips, but he has no real power in our life. We're telling them that this is just religion, that this is just something that we do as a hobby because we are peculiarly religious people, and that irreligious people can go do other things to get their fulfillment and their self -actualization from.

We're basically saying that this is just an add -on to our life, and it's not our life. So beyond all the damage that it does to us spiritually in our relationship with God, it is tragic for the things around us.

When we worry, we cut the world off from seeing Christ. We take the focus off of him where it should be, and we point it on to ourselves, and we join in in the worldly chorus and give in to worry and fear and everything else.

And if that, of course, is wrong, and that, of course, begs the question, if the default mode of our heart is to worry, then how does

Christ call us to live differently? Beyond just a simple command, do not worry, how do we actually get there?

How do we actually live a life that is growing away from worry, away from fear? How do we do that?

Because we know we are sinners. We know that in our human effort, we cannot actually do that.

How do we get to the point to where we live a life where we are obeying what Jesus said, not worrying, not fearing, but instead trusting in Christ?

How do we get there? And I will tell you that Matthew 6 .33

is the definitive answer. This is the biblical answer for how do you stop worrying.

This is the remedy. This is the antidote. This is the vaccine for the plague of worry.

Jesus says, but seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all of these things will be added to you.

What Jesus is saying is, in spite of all of that, I'm gonna say, but in contrast, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and everything that you need is gonna be added to you.

So with the time that we have remaining, I wanna break apart this sentence. I wanna break it apart into a few different parts, because we need to understand what

Jesus is saying if we wanna understand the cure to the virus of worry.

He begins this phrase with a single word, but, which means that there's this fundamental switch that Jesus wants us to understand.

He's saying that the world may look hopeless, but the way the Gentiles are living may seem like that they're giving themselves over to worry, but not so for us.

And for you and I, the world right now may be giving themselves over to hysteria and fear and panic.

Maybe they're turning to alcohol and depression or anything else in order to deal with this coronavirus, but not so for Christians.

We have seen that how the world responds to this pandemic is not like Jesus, and for us as the ones who love

Christ, but this is not the way that we respond. You and I don't have permission from Christ to worry.

In a single word, he transitions to contrast these two emotions and to say that, as a

Christian, we are not permitted to do these things, and now he's gonna teach us how. He's gonna teach us how that we can actually live this way when he says the word seek.

But instead of all of that, I want you to seek. You and I were made to seek.

We were not created with our head to be filled with fear and overflowing with dread. You and I were made to consider the evidences of God and his faithfulness and to stand up and to seek him.

And that word seek is an interesting Greek word. It means to devote serious energy and effort to realize one's desire or objective.

It's like a runner who dedicates every waking hour, every thought, every decision, every meal, every workout for the goal of running a marathon.

So too, the Christian must dedicate every aspect of their life to seeking God. The word zeteo, which is the word for seek, it means to strive after something with everything that you have in order to obtain it.

It's like a man in scripture who finds the pearl of great price out in the middle of a field, and then he immediately buries it.

And he goes and he sells everything that he has, every penny that he has to his name so that he can buy that field, so that he can have that pearl, so that he can have that treasure.

So too, you and I, we must seek God with everything that we have so that we can know God, so that we can serve

God, so that we can understand him. Zeteo means that we aim at something and we do whatever it takes to hit that something.

It's like a school of snipers who practice for hours and hours and hours in various conditions, owning their skill and working on their breathing and carefully learning how to squeeze the trigger so as not to pull the weapon off of target, learning how the effects of the weather and the wind and everything is gonna affect the small metal traveling bullet from hundreds of feet, thousands of feet away.

And how much more is it that a Christian should seek to set our sights on God and our sights on Christ and our sights on the joy that God provides for us?

How much more should we dedicate all of our lives in order to finding it and making sure that we're aiming at the right thing instead of aiming at the world and all of the things that are gonna take us off target?

How is it that worldly men like these snipers and green berets and Navy SEALs and Delta Force and all of those people can put so much energy and effort into hitting a paper target when we as the people of God know who

He is? We should be the most motivated people on the planet in order to aim our sights and aim our affections at Christ.

Zeteo means that we are to desire something and wish for it so strongly that we would do anything in order to have it.

And forgive me for being a little bit crass here, but I believe that in a very negative way, drug addiction comes really close.

In a negative way, in a sinful way, it comes close to seeing if you can think about its opposite of what it means to see

Christ. The drug addict, it's all they think about is their addiction. It's what controls their habits, it controls their behavior, they orient every aspect of their life around it.

And again, that is in a negative way. In a positive and in a godly and in a righteous way, think about what it means to be so consumed with God that He commands every aspect of your thinking.

When the Bible says for us to seek the Lord, it is not a placid activity. It is not just a morning devotion.

It is not just an afternoon prayer. It is not just weekly church attendance. Seeking the

Lord is to have every area of our life driving towards Him. It is to long for Him, to desire

Him, to put away everything else in order to have Him. Now to some, this is gonna look utterly obsessive.

To the world, it's gonna look like foolishness. And I'm gonna be honest with you, if you start understanding what

Jesus is saying here and you start living this out, many in the church are gonna look at you and call you radical. They're gonna look at you and say that that is not biblical and that is not normal.

And they're gonna say that this is some sort of radical version of Christianity that they don't wanna be a part of.

I'm telling you the truth. This is just average, basic Christianity. All of us are commanded to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.

All of us are called to do that. Now, suppose that that makes sense.

I don't wanna make any pretensions to say that it's gonna be easy. I don't wanna make any pretensions to say that that giving every aspect of your life over to the

Lord is gonna somehow natural to you and your sin. I don't want you to think that at all, but I do want you to see the truth of it.

I do want you to see how this level of determination and seeking after the

Lord is biblical. And I want you to see how the

Bible lays this out in this passage. It doesn't just talk about it in the abstract.

It talks about it in three specific categories. It doesn't just say seek

God, whatever that means. It says, seek Him first, seek

His kingdom first and seek His righteousness first. It gives us three ways that we can devote energy and effort into seeking after Christ, the same

Christ who first sought after us. So what I want us to do right now is for the rest of this verse,

I want us to look at what does it actually mean when Jesus says, seek me first, seek my kingdom first and seek my righteousness first in Matthew 6, 33, what does that mean?

Well, first, it doesn't just mean to seek Him first in our chronology, or maybe you could say this in your schedule.

He's not saying to do the kingdom work in the morning. He's not saying to work on righteousness in the morning.

He's not asking us to simply be in relationship with Him in the first part of the day and then to forget about Him for the rest of the day.

He's not saying first as a matter of our schedule. He's not saying, love me first from eight o 'clock a .m.

to nine o 'clock a .m. or from nine o 'clock to 10 o 'clock, or if you're a really late sleeper, from 11 o 'clock to 12. He's not telling you to seek

Him first in your chronology. He's telling you to seek Him first in a different way, in a more holistic way.

In the same way, He's not just telling us to seek Him first as in a matter of our priorities. He's not saying that I need to be the most important thing in your life and then you can have other things in your life that are seemingly less important.

He's not saying, put me first on a to -do list. He's not saying that I want you,

I wanna be the most important person in your life. He's not saying that I want you to do my work more than you do your work.

He's not saying that I want you to seek after righteousness more than you seek after sin, because in that category, that means that you can have divided affections.

It means that you can do righteous activity more fiercely than you do sin, but that's not what

Jesus is saying. He's saying more than just first in your priorities, more than just first in the way that you seek

His kingdom and the way that you love Him and the way that you seek after righteousness, He's wanting all of you.

When Jesus says that we are supposed to seek Him first and His righteousness first and His kingdom first, He's not talking about putting these three things on a to -do list or on a priority line.

He's saying that He wants all of our seeking to be aimed at Him. Relationally, this looks like He wants us to seek

Him with all of our heart, with all of our soul, with all of our mind, with all of our strength. He doesn't just want us to love

Him more than our wife or more than our kids or more than our parents or more than whatever else.

He wants us to love our parents through the lens of we love God most.

He wants us to love our spouses like we love Jesus more and we are loving them through that love.

He wants us to love our children. He wants us to love every single person through the lens of our love for Him so that He's not just first in priority.

He's not just first on a to -do list. Everything that we do is now informed by the love of God.

He is everything. You see, the cure to worry and dread is to seek

Him in our emotions, to seek Him in our marriages, to seek

Him in our singleness, to seek Him in our careers, to seek Him in our thinking, in our quiet time. When it comes to His kingdom,

He wants us to seek, to model after Him godly behavior.

He wants us to look like citizens of that kingdom instead of foreigners of His grace. He wants us to love

Him like He's the king, not like this is democracy where we get to vote on things.

He wants us to love Him and love His commands because His commands show us His character. He wants us to share this joy of the kingdom with others.

He wants us to welcome men and women into the gates of God's kingdom through Christ. You see, relationally and from a kingdom perspective,

He wants all of Him to inform all of us in everything that we do, and that'll trickle into the way that we approach holiness and righteousness.

God desires that we live holy lives, but He doesn't want you to do that religiously. He doesn't want you to just bear down and try harder so that you can be holy so that you can please

God. We don't yearn to be righteous and we don't long to be holy as a way of making God more happy with us or manipulating

Him to love us more. We are not like two kids competing for their father's affection so that whichever one is the best of the two is gonna get the most love.

That is not what we're doing. We rest in His love, His finished love on the cross.

We bask in His affections for us because of who Jesus is. For God so loved the world that He gave

His only begotten son, and because we are loved that much, we want to love others. Because He died for the whole of us, we want the whole of our lives to be conformed to Him.

We do not love Him to get Him to love us, but because He loves us, we wanna love Him. We wanna have affections for Him.

We want all of our life increasingly to come into focus with the gospel.

We want all of our life to be informed with it. We wanna be the kind of people who because He first sought us, we seek

Him with everything. And here's the point.

The cure to worry is not seeking the things of the world. And it is not living the kind of Christian life that is divided, where you're kind of seeking

God and kind of seeking the world. It is the kind of life that is so holistically seeking

God, relationally for His kingdom, seeking

Him in your own righteousness, that you want all of your life to be increasingly

His. And I get that you're not gonna do that perfectly. And again, I want you to understand what

I'm saying. I am not talking about religion. I'm not talking about earning anything with God.

When I say that part of overcoming this pernicious sin of worry is to seek

God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength, I know you're not gonna be able to do that. When I say seeking

His kingdom with all of your strength and all of your power and all of your might and seeking to serve Him across the whole of your life,

I know you're not gonna do that perfectly. Neither am I. When I say that the cure to worry is seeking righteousness and learning how to live a holy life in Christ, I know you're going to fail, because I fail.

We all fail. We all fall short of the glory of God. But what I'm trying to communicate to you is as you increasingly give that part of your life over to Him, as you increasingly seek

Him, as you increasingly begin making your life about His kingdom instead of the kingdom of this world, and as you increasingly begin to seek after righteousness and holiness instead of giving yourself over to sin and the world's way of thinking, as you do those things, worry will dissipate and disappear from your life.

For example, when you think about a yard, you know, we're getting ready to be in spring.

We're getting ready to start seeing green grass and leaves and all of those things. And when you think about a yard, it doesn't just mean spraying for weeds.

If you wanna eliminate weeds and if you wanna eliminate roots and if you wanna eliminate thorns and thistles and everything else, it's not just about spraying them.

That's valid and you have to do that. But you also must, if you wanna have a thick lawn, if you wanna have a yard where no weeds can grow, you also have to sow the seed so thick and so dense that the roots are so thick that weeds can't even get in.

Well, in the same way, we must identify, we need to do both.

We need to do both of those strategies in our Christian life. We need to identify all of the weeds and the thorns of sin.

And we need to rip those out through the Holy Spirit's power at work in us, not our own strength. It says, if by the

Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the flesh, then you will live. Yes, spray those weeds, those sinful thorns that come up in your life.

Spray them with the gospel of grace. Bring the gospel to bear on your life. Shine the light of Christ onto those things so that they will be removed from your life.

Yes, of course, we must do that. But second, we must also fill our lives so full of Christ and his gospel that there is decreasing capacity for those sins to take hold.

This is why we seek him first. This is why we seek his kingdom. This is why we seek his righteousness, because we don't want to give an opportunity for the seeds of worry to take root in our life.

Sure, you can pull out all the weeds. You can be a perfectly faithful Christian if when you see those weeds pop up, you bring the gospel to bear on them and you rip them up and you refuse to allow them to live in your heart.

But think about it this way. If all you had was a field full of dirt and all your strategy was, was just to remove the weeds, you would be exhausted.

Every moment of your life would be focused on here's a weed, there's a weed, here's a weed, there's a weed, because you have given the weeds a canvas which was to take root.

You've given them open territory to be able to not only take root, but to spread their seed so that other aspects of the soil can be infected.

And it's just a never ending battle. If you really wanna have victory over these cursed weeds and dandelions and everything else, if you wanna have victory over them, and this is a human example, then you have to not only spray for them, but you have to so thickly plant the grass that they now have no more place to spread.

Then you will notice that weeds pop up less and less frequently so that you have to pull them out less and less frequently.

You have to spray them less and less frequently. What I'm trying to tell you is that if you will seek

God first ferociously and seek his kingdom first, not out of religion, but out of a response to what he's done for you, if you will dedicate your entire life to seeking him, his kingdom, his righteousness, and all of those things, then what you will do, and this is again, only by the power of the

Holy Spirit at work in your life, but what will happen is that you will have less opportunity in your heart for weeds to take root.

And when they do, you'll be able to combat it with the gospel. When you see it, you'll be able to pull it out wherever it is, because it will not be a full -on onslaught of worry all over the surface of your heart.

It will be a few pop shots here and there that you need to deal with and you need to deal with quickly, but deal with it in the power of the gospel.

So, you know, just like we kind of understand that when it comes to having a really nice lawn, and that takes work and that takes effort, what

I'm asking you to consider is for the soil of your heart to be so thickly rooted in the gospel that the roots of sin and that the roots of worry have barely any place to be able to take root in your heart, and then you will start to see victory.

And He doesn't just simply command us to do these things, to not worry and to seek

Him first and to use that example to be so thickly rooted in the gospel.

He doesn't just say that. He also gives a promise that as we begin doing these things that we will also see that He responds to us in a particular way.

And I wanna look at what He says here in the back half of verse 33. He says, seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you.

What Jesus is saying is that He intends whether in this life or the next to meet every single one of your needs, whether it's in this life or the next,

God intends to heal the world of every sickness, every disease, every evil. And while I'm sure that the coronavirus is gonna come to an end at some point and it's gonna be finished, you're not finished with problems.

If you live long enough in this life, today it's coronavirus, tomorrow it's gonna be wars and rumors of wars or physical phenomena like earthquakes and hurricanes and blizzards.

If you live long enough, you're gonna bleed. If you see enough time on this earth, you're gonna have pain.

But look at the promise of God. Instead of giving ourself over to worries and fears and all of those things, seek

Him first, seek Him relationally, seek Him in His kingdom, seek His life of righteousness and then trust the fact that you're gonna have everything that you need.

Jesus is saying that you need to give up your desire to care for yourself and surrender to the fact that He is gonna give you everything that you need.

He's saying that you need to become like a newborn babe all over again to let

Him feed you, to let Him clothe you, to let

Him provide for you. And I know I'm speaking metaphorically right now but think about the point of it.

Think about that first gaze of a newborn baby when it sees its mother for the first time and in that stare, every single worry that she's ever had fades away.

She's at home and that baby is placed on her mother's chest and there's this skin to skin intimacy, this contact that happens and there is nothing at all wrong in the world for that child.

That's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about, don't let everything that's happening around you cause you to worry.

Don't let everything that's happening around you cause you to fear. Those things will not add a single millisecond to your life.

Instead, what I want you to do is I want you to trust that God is gonna take care of you in every way.

He's not gonna leave you. He's not gonna forsake you. Seek first His kingdom.

Seek Him first in relationship. Seek His righteousness. Seek Him in such a way that all of your life becomes increasingly conformed to the gospel.

And trust that every single moment of every single day,

He is gonna take care of you. Whether it's coronavirus or cancer, whether it's life or death, whether it's sickness or health, whatever it is that you face in this life, you belong to God and God loves you and He cares for you and I think this is why

Jesus ends this passage like this. So do not worry. In light of everything

I've said, do not worry about tomorrow. For tomorrow will care for itself.

Each day has enough trouble on its own. So don't worry. If you have suffered with worry today, if this virus has caused you to fear, do not lose heart.

Turn again to the Lord and trust that He will provide all that you need. Instead of worrying, use all of that energy to seek

Him. Use all of that energy to invest in your relationship with Him. Use that energy and find creative ways to serve

God and His kingdom. Use that energy to repent and submit your life to Christ. Above all else, above everything else, take that energy that you have that you may be tempted to use for worry and rest and ponder the gospel.

Know that the Lord loves you and cares for you so much that He sent His one and only Son and if He would do that, then surely you can trust

Him with today. Surely you can trust Him with tomorrow. And surely you can trust

Him in the weeks ahead. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, I pray that you would help us to not be given over to fear and to worry, but Lord that you would help us to trust you.

Lord, help us not to treat our trust like a passive thing, but to treat it like you do as an active thing.

In light of everything that you've done for us, help us to seek you. Help us not to just sit and wait for you to take all of our worries away.

Help us to seek you, to understand the gospel, to seek you first in your kingdom, to seek you first relationally, to pattern our life after Christ so that increasingly more and more and more of us looks like you and thinks like you and acts like you and talks like you and walks like you.

Lord, I pray against this pernicious sin called worrying. Lord, I pray that it would not be a part of our lives.

Lord, I pray like that healthy, beautiful, thick, dense sod grass type of lawn that that would be what our heart looks like, a place where worry has no place.

And Lord, when it does pop up, I pray that we would have the courage to identify it and pull it out with the gospel, with the power of the spirit.

Lord, I pray that our hearts would be a canvas of growth and health in you and that Lord, that our calmness and our peace and our certainty in Christ would be a testimony to the onlooking world of just how good and how powerful you are.

And Lord, I pray that the world would not look at us as their peers. Lord, I pray that they would look to us to tell them the hope that we have in Christ.