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If I heard it once, I heard it a thousand times. Class, it's the first day, and I don't know how to pronounce all the names. I'm not very good with pronouncing names, and so I'll just pronounce your name, and if it's wrong, I'll just correct myself.
And so, third grade scenario. Michelle Abendroth, that's Michael. My mom was watching a movie. There was a French director. She thought it'd be cute to leave the A out. It's not Michelle, it's Michael.
Every year. Explains a lot, doesn't it? Psychologically about me. A boy named Sue kind of thing. I read an article from several months ago by Gene Veith about what's in a name. As you know, Moses, to draw out.
Jesus, God saves. Abraham, father of multitudes. And a man from Nebraska, matter of fact, Bellevue, Nebraska, did a little research on the way pop culture has influenced names. What are people naming their children these days?
He found, for the record of 2000, the year 2000 in social security numbers in the American states, 22 girls were named as Infinity. Not with a Y, like regarding God, but with an I, like a car. 55 boys were named Chevy, and five girls were named Celica.
More cars. 298 girls were named Armani, after the clothing line. 164 were a little more casual with the name Nautica. And six boys were named Timberland, I guess, for the shoe company. Veith goes on to report the five girls were named Rayon, six boys were named Cashmere, and seven were named Denim.
No polyesters in here yet. Blends. 49 boys were named Cannon, presumably after the camera. Seven boys were named Del Monte, I guess after the can of goods. 21 girls were named L 'Oreal, and Veith said after the hair dye, presumably to let them know that you are worth it.
23 girls and six boys were named Sky, S-K-Y-I, excuse me, S-K-Y-Y, brand of vodka. Nine girls were named Chianti, and that's it for today. But the most interesting one, Veith says, quote, perhaps the ultimate product name for kids uncovered by Mr. Evans was ESPN, the sports network.
And he found that two people, one in Texas and one in Michigan, were named ESPN. I guess their dads were big sports fans. The Dallas Morning News did call one of the families and say, how do you pronounce your son's name?
And it was pronounced Espen. ESPN, what's in a name is my question this morning. What's in a name? And this morning, once we have our review for the topic of worry, I will show you a name of God that is rarely talked about, not studied very often, but will be your cure-all when you see this name of God when it comes to the issue of anxiety and worry.
You say, well, what is that name? I won't tell you that name until we get there, but there is a name that will help you when it comes to anxiety and worry to give you the right view of God so you can stop being assaulted from this problem of worry and anxiety.
If you turn your Bibles to Matthew, we're going to review the Matthew passage, review the Philippians passage, and then we'll go to 1 Timothy to wrap up this well-needed series on the topic of anxiety or worry.
What I like to call the Christian's forbidden fruit, worry. I was once told that if you have the right view of God, it can solve every one of your problems. And this is no different. If you have a high view of God, a transcendent view of God, a great view of God, a biblical view of God, it puts everything into the right proportion so your problems are seen properly.
If you have a very small God, as one man wrote a book several decades ago, is your God too small? Then the small God is incapable in your own mind to tackle the problems that you face. That is to say the right view of God gives you the right view of everything else.
And today I want to preach to you a big God. I want to preach to you a biblical God. I've been fired up all this week about preaching. I feel like I want to get in a three-point stance because I get to tell you about not a puny God, not a God that can have his will checkmated by free will of humans or anything else or the system of Satan, but this great, powerful, sovereign God who always gets his way.
And my thesis today, once we have our review, will be this. If God is not worried, then you ought not to be worried. On the flip side, if God is worried, you should be afraid, terribly afraid. If God's not worried, why should I worry?
But before we get there, let me show you what's happening in evangelical circles today that talk about this small God. Can you imagine? Supposedly people in evangelical churches say this, quote, if Mary had declined from bearing Christ, then God would have sought other avenues.
After all, it's doubtful that there was only one maiden in all of Israel through whom God could work. God is resourceful in finding people and then equipping them with the elements necessary for accomplishing his purposes.
Same writer said the Bethlehem Massacre was not the will of God and was not planned beforehand by God. Instead, it reveals that the will of God in its fullness may not be fulfilled in all situations. Did you get that?
God doesn't get his way all the time. He doesn't make everything happen according to his will. Another man said, there is no single, all-determinative divine will that coercively steers all things. If you believe that, you should be worried.
Sorry for the pointing over here. If God is not on the throne, you should have the shakes, your knees should knock, you should be having no fingernails. One man said God, for whatever reasons, designed the cosmos such that he does not necessarily always get his way.
I'm worried. If I serve a God like that, I'm nervous. I'm anxious. One man said the issue is not whether God's knowledge is perfect. It is. The issue is about the nature of the reality that God perfectly knows.
In other words, God knows some things very well, but other things he doesn't know. Tozer was right. He said decades ago, it is my opinion that the Christian conception of God current in these middle years of the 20th century is so decadent as to be utterly beneath the dignity of the most high God and actually to constitute for professed believers something amounting to a moral calamity.
The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian church today is to purify and elevate her concept of God until it is once more worthy of him and of her, the church. Don't you wanna serve a great God who's on the throne, getting his way in all circumstances?
Of course, we need to have a correct view of God, A, for his honor and B, for the side benefits that come along with it, i .e. no worry. Let's go to Matthew chapter six. I think you're already there and have a quick review of the Christian's prescription for the problem of worry, why we ought not worry, a little theology of worry.
We'll go to Matthew six and Philippians four and then we'll look at an attribute of God, several attributes that will help us be reminded that God doesn't worry, so why should we? Again, this will be a review, but I think it's been an important series.
Many of you have said, I'm so thankful for the messages about worry. One even said, as I was up last week and when I admitted last week that I worry, left to my own devices, I worry. And one wife, this is an exact quote, said to her husband, I'm worried about him.
We all worry, so what do we do? A, we'll do ABCs, kind of just for a memory device. A, as you remember from last week, admit that all worry and anxiety is sinful, Matthew chapter six, verse 25. Jesus says, for this reason I say to you, do not be anxious for your life, and if not for the bigger things, not for the smaller things that are compartments of that, as to what you shall eat, what you shall drink, for your body, as to what you shall put on, is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?
Certainly it is, life is more than that. And you say, well, what's the difference between a good concern, Paul in Philippians two was concerned for the churches, yet he says, don't worry in Philippians chapter four, be anxious for nothing.
What's the difference? Probably the easiest definition is this, is if you have concern over something and God is in the middle of that concern, and you're doing things to please God as you think about it and take care of your responsibilities, i .e. to work, et cetera, that's not worry, that's concern, but when God is out of the picture, when God's out of the middle, and you're thinking about how with your own resources and your own finances and your own flowcharts, you can fix this problem, then that would be worry.
The best thing you can do is if you worry, say to God, I am worried, please what? Forgive me, please help, that's good, please forgive me. God, I'm worried, I'm anxious, and Jesus has told the disciples not to be, and Paul has said, don't be anxious about anything, God, forgive me, and in comes the floodgates of mercy a la Proverbs 28, 13.
B, believe that your father is loving and good. The first one is negative, this is more positive, believe that your father is loving, kind, and good. Jesus gives an illustration, we won't look at all of them, but just look at the one in verse 26, look at the birds of the air.
And I'm so proud of some of the people in the congregation, they told me that in the last couple of weeks, they've done some bird watching to see how God provides for the birds. Sometimes I wish he wouldn't provide so well, I was taking a walk yesterday up by the reservoir, and a bunch of swallows are there now, and the swallows are dive bombing me to try to get me away from their nests.
And I'm thinking, God has provided the swallows to such a degree that now they're dive bombing the pastor before his sermon about, look at the birds. I try to be like a scarecrow and make myself really big.
They still were dive bombing me. He says, look at the birds of the air, just a very common thing. They do not sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father, not the bird's heavenly father, did you catch that?
Your heavenly father feeds them. If he will take care of something that's not made in the image and likeness of God, that is not immortal, that has no soul, won't he then take care of you? Answer, yes.
Because God's good, because God's faithful, and in the Greek idea of goodness, it was kind of this abstract ideal. In the Bible times, goodness was something that God did for you in your life on a personal daily basis.
Doesn't do any good, you can't add any height to your life span or to your head, you can't do that in verse 27. He says, look at the lilies in verse 28, and then he challenges us in verse 30 through the discussion with these men, oh men of little faith, the issue with anxiety is always taking our eyes off the Lord, putting them on our problems, which causes us to doubt God, to forget God, and so the cure to anxiety is to trust God and see his goodness.
You fill in the blank, you can say it out loud. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not what? Want. It's very good for 1611 English, and our current translations have carried that over as well. But that almost sounds like, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
But I have some wants. I see TV, I see advertising, I have some wants. You know what the passage means? It means what it means in 1611 English, but do you know what 2004 English that would be translated as?
I think the NIV gets it right, I think it's in there. The Lord is my shepherd, I lack what? Nothing. That's the point, it's not that we don't have desires and needs, the point is, since God is the shepherd, he's my shepherd, I lack nothing.
A, admit that it's worry. B, believe your Father is loving and good and provides. C, chase after God and his will. In other words, look at verse 33 of Matthew 6. Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things, what you need, what your family needs.
These things shall be added to you. He says, I want your devotion and I want your service and if you're so concerned about your own problems, you're not going to serve in the local church. You're not gonna serve things for God's kingdom and glory.
Matthew chapter six, Jesus said, here's how you pray, boys. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. And he says, your goal in life, your priority in life, your aim should be the name of Christ wherever you go, to exalt it.
And when you're focused on yourself and worrying, you're not serving God. Conversely, when you're serving God in the local church, you tend to forget about whom? Yourself. If you live all out for the Lord, he'll take care of you.
D, do not worry about the future, found in verse 34 of Matthew 6. Therefore, do not be anxious for tomorrow. If you're not supposed to be anxious for anything, certainly don't be for tomorrow, for tomorrow will care for itself.
Each day has enough trouble of its own. I wanna write an amen in there. Today's got a lot of trouble. Tomorrow's gonna have extra, why double it? Why add it up? There'll be grace for tomorrow when you get there.
The Sanhedrin even said, if tomorrow does bring new trouble, there will be new grace to meet it. Don't worry about tomorrow. You could even do it this way if you wanted. Get a bunch of current event magazines.
U .S. News and World Report, Time, Newsweek. You could give it a bunch of newspapers. How about this? If you get the newspaper, keep your newspapers for about three months. Stack them up. Three months later, go to the very bottom of that stack and pull out three months ago and read it and then see if there's still things to worry about.
When I read U .S. News and World Report, old ones, I just think this is so outdated and there are different troubles and different issues and I'm not, why would I even worry about half the things I'm supposed to be worried about because they don't come true.
The latest out of BBC World broadcast today, the bubonic plague might come back and it's really the black death. 23 million people died in one century and it could come back to get you. It might, but today I have other things to do like here's God in his glory and Christ in his splendor and he's gonna have to take care of me.
And if I die, what's the worst thing that'll happen? Well, I just gave the answer. I didn't mean to. What's the worst thing that'll happen? I die, glory. E, entreat God to help you. Entreat is just a synonym for pray.
Ask God to help you. God, I'm worried, help me. Let's turn to Philippians chapter four and finish our review here about how do we live our lives to be free from this bond servant, this yoke on our shoulders of worry and pressure and sweating on our forehead and nervousness and pacing and just saying, oh God, wringing our hands.
Philippians chapter four, Paul knows what he's talking about when it comes to worry, he's in jail. He doesn't know that he's going to get out. We know, but he doesn't know. And Paul doesn't want you and neither does God to be controlled by circumstances, the tyranny of circumstances, how they control.
And so you know the passage very well. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. The answer to anxiety is admit at first, remember who God is, secondly, serve him and his kingdom.
Don't add up worry and now pray to God with supplication, request, all thanking God at the same time. Say, God, when I'm coming to your presence with thanksgiving I say, whatever you've sent me is good.
However you've planned it is perfectly wise. God, you've given me salvation, you'll give me everything else. God, you give good gifts to your people and I'm just going to be thankful. I know you've appointed these things.
And here he gives three words for asking requests. You see the words, prayer, petition and requests. And all three of them have to do with just asking God for things. God, there's something going on in my life, I'm anxious about it, please forgive me, you're gonna have to take care of it.
I don't know what the best way is to tell the events of this week regarding these words. The word prayer, look at the word prayer. There's two words for prayer that are really similar, prosuche and proskuneo, you don't need to know that, but they're just really close by the way they look, the way they feel and everything else.
And one is to bow down and worship, to adore God. To get down, I mean, here I am to bow down, here I am to worship, remember that song? That's a word of prayer, of adoration. It's the A on the ax synonym, what's the ax synonym?
Adoration is the A, that's right. There's another word that just means just to pray, God, I have requests and I'm just offering them up to you and entreating you to answer me. Proskuneo and prosuche is another way we could translate those, and so you say, well, what's the difference?
All week I thought, just something not right. Last week I said to you, so instead of coming to God saying gimme, gimme, gimme, help me, help me, help me regarding anxiety, you should come and say, prayer is God, thank you, I worship you, I adore you, and then let me get to the request.
That is technically true of a good prayer, but it struck me all week, I said, no, I've never been taught that before, and I read Expositor's Bible Commentary, Conservative and Good, I read Wiersbe's Commentary, Conservative and Good, and they said it's praying and adoring and all that stuff, and I'm like, that can't be true, and I preached it last week, and so my name's on the line.
So I thought, there's only one way to find out. Forget the commentaries, let's just start digging, and the more I digged and the more I dug, the more I realized it's not the word for prayer, worship, bow down, it's the word for here's my request.
So for those of you taking notes at home, I was wrong last week, it's not right. It's true that you should adore God before you come to him, but Philippians chapter four doesn't teach that at all. It teaches you to come before God.
So it says in verse seven, and the peace of God. Here's the remedy that God gives, the peace of God, not just fluffy, sweet, cloud peace, but the shalom from God himself, which surpasses all comprehension shall guard, like a fortress military term, your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
What a neat promise from God. You're anxious, you go to God and say, I'm hurting, I'm anxious, please help me. Please get rid of my anxiety and the peace of God will guard your heart. You can think about those movies that you like where people are up on top of the garrison, they got all kinds of fire boulders throwing and sentinels and guns and everything else, and that's the picture, God's guarding the anxious heart.
All right, that's enough for review. Now let's get to the letter F, A, B, C, D, E, F. F, forget not that God is not worried. God is not worried. F, God does not worry. If you are going to ask the question, where does the Bible teach that God doesn't worry, where might you go?
You could go to a lot of different places maybe. What is maybe one of the most arguably stressful situations in all of the world? Well, there's lots of stress, but one is the local church. The local church has all kinds of pressures because everybody in the church is a sinner saved by grace.
Christ says he's going to build the church and Satan says, therefore, I will try to what? Destroy the church. And so this isn't like the Moose Lodge or the Elks Club where there's just interpersonal relationships that somehow aren't right.
This is similar to that because we have interpersonal relationships that are not right and we conflict and we rub each other and iron sharpens iron and sparks flies. But also Satan is alive and well working here where he wouldn't be necessarily in the Moose Lodge.
That's like the kid who is a Christian and the other kids were in a horse and buggy and they said, come on, get in. And they said, oh yeah, you're the pastor's kid and all this stuff. If Satan were to come to this horse and buggy in this cart right now, who would he go after?
You or us? The pastor's kid said, well, he'd go after me of course because he's already got you. That is to say the local church is a place where there could be lots of anxiety, lots of trouble, lots of divisions and false teaching and all kinds of issues.
So Paul is going to remind Timothy, if you go to first Timothy chapter six, he's going to remind Timothy in a book to teach a pastor what to do that the pastor needs to keep his eyes on the Lord because God doesn't worry, therefore the pastor should not.
It's easy for a pastor to say, we have a bunch of saints in the church of which I am one and there's a lot of trouble and there's a lot of cares and concerns but there'll be glorified one day, so why should I worry about what's already gonna happen?
And it's that kind of attitude where Paul is going to remind Timothy by the spirit of God, don't worry, God's not worried. First Timothy chapter six, verse 13, he's still giving him commands to do as a local pastor, local elder.
I charge you in the presence of God who gives life to all things, it's a pretty weighty charge, and of Christ Jesus, the Messiah, Savior, who testified the good confession before Pontius Pilate, that you keep the commandment without staying or reproach until the appearing of our Lord Christ Jesus.
And now Paul does something that I want to do more often. I've been convicted about this this week and I said, God, I need to do this more often. Paul is in the middle of charges, he's in the middle of doctrine, he's in the middle of telling the church to do something through the leader, and he just goes off and he can't control himself and he starts blurting out these great praises to God.
I don't do that very often and I don't hear many other people do that very often and I want to do that. Go back to chapter one for a second, Paul's talking about all kinds of stuff and then he just goes into this doxology.
He just begins to praise God and not just talking about God, I think we're pretty good at that at this church by God's grace. Here's the doctrine of Christ and he's virgin born and he died as a substitutionary death and he's been raised from the dead the third day and Jesus is coming back and all these doctrines we have.
But here Paul, as he's doing that, then he stops talking to the people and he starts talking to God. He's talked about false teachers, he's talked about salvation and now he can't stand himself any longer.
Chapter one of first Timothy 17, now to the king eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God be honor and glory forever and ever. And he almost is trying to get people to join in, amen. You can almost hear him kind of beckoning and beseeching people to say that.
And he's talking about false teachers and salvation, he just has to praise God. Now let's go back to chapter six again. He's giving Timothy the final charge of this letter and then he just starts praising God, speaking well of him.
You see a little dash there in my text, first Timothy 6 .15, which he will bring about at the proper time. God's in control of the second coming, he'll return at the exact right moment. He, and here comes that oxalogy, he is the blessed and only sovereign, king of kings and Lord of lords, who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light whom no man has seen or can see.
To him be honor and eternal dominion and he almost goads you on, amen. I like that. This has nothing to do with the sermon worry. It has to do with when you speak of God and when you're talking to somebody else, hey Bruce, how you doing?
What's going on at work? God is so great, isn't he? But in this little doxology, there's a title that we rarely look at for God that tells us how God is not worried. And it's two little words, the blessed.
See that in verse 15? He who is the blessed. Is God worried? How could he be? He's the blessed. Give me some synonyms for blessed. Typically in the Bible, we see blessed is the man who doesn't walk in this kind of council.
Blessed are you when all men revile you. Blessed are the peacemakers. And it's a blessing that Jews would give to others. Now God is called the blessed and you won't find this very often in the Bible.
Chapter one of first Timothy and first Timothy chapter six, he's called the blessed. Why is God called the blessed? And why am I yelling? God is happy. God is satisfied. God is content. God gets his way.
God's not worried. He's the blessed one. Listen to what my old pastor said, quote, blessed means happy, content, or fulfilled. When used in reference to God, it describes his lack of unhappiness, frustration, and anxiety.
He is content, satisfied, at peace, fulfilled, and perfectly joyful. While some things please him and other things do not, nothing alters his heavenly contentment. He controls everything to his own joyous ends, end quote.
God isn't worried and what a great thing for your own life, but also here for the pastor to put in at the very end. Hey, pastor, you're gonna be a sinful man dealing with sinful people and here's the charge.
And I charge you in the presence of God. And you say, but I'm so thankful that even though I'm gonna be messed up and even though my circumstances and even though I live in a fallen world, God's never worried.
God's satisfied. God's content. God's blissful. He's not perturbed. Can you imagine God up in heaven wringing his hands? I can't believe Avendroth just did that again. You know, like we have to buy God some of that fingernail stuff that you put on that tastes really bad so you don't do it because it looked pretty bad for God to be biting his fingernails.
He's the blessed. That's why the sermon title I put on there, does God need Prozac? Because first of all, I wanted to shock you. Second of all, I wanted to say, God doesn't need anything to calm his nerves because he's eternally calm.
Because God doesn't worry. This word is also used of the widow in verse 40 of 1 Corinthians 7. But in my opinion, she's happier if she remains as she is. An older widow, just blessed. Just no grief, nothing's unpleasant.
Carefree, no worries. He's the blessed one. Now, why is God the blessed one? Look at some of the other words around this. What surrounds all this? He's the what? First of all, the only sovereign. That's not the typical word for sovereign.
That's the word where we get dynasty. He's the sovereign king. And this word tries to bring out a little bit of the nuance that says his authority is not delegated. I have authority here at the church, but I have to tell you, it's all delegated authority.
It's all from the Lord. God has no delegated authority. He's the sovereign king. They use this of Zeus, but how much more here of God? God isn't worried because he's powerful. And if God's got enough power that he can get his way, why would he worry?
One man said, can God do one thing just as easily as he can do another? Yes, it is no more difficult for him to create a universe than to make a butterfly. I like that. And does God somehow have his strength and his power diminished as he's helping poor Abendroth out in the middle of his life?
And now I've tried to help Mike, so therefore I can't help Dave. Because I need to sit down and have some Gatorade and get some sugar tablets because I'm tired. He's the king. He's here, the sovereign, the powerful one.
He can do one thing as easily as he can do the next. Create the stars and the sun and the moon, and just with one word, can get me out of my situation, can give me enough power to get through my situation just as easily as the next.
And if you take a look at the passage, another word that it's surrounded by, king of kings, a bunch of words, and lord of lords. Literally, the king of those kinging and the lord of those lording. He's the king of kings and the lord of lords.
Well, I wouldn't be worried if I was the king of kings and the lord of lords, would you? God does as he pleases, only as he pleases, and always as he pleases. Does God always get his way? Of course he does.
Psalm 115, verse three says, but our God is in the heaven and he worries all night. Wait, oh, that's the Revised Standard Perversion, I think. I don't think that's the Bible. He does whatever what he pleases.
God is not worried, so therefore don't worry. Psalm 103, verse 19, the Lord has established his throne in the heaven and his sovereignty rules over everything except your little personal space. His sovereignty rules over all.
He sits on a throne. He has a reign, he has a dominion. He ordains things, he decrees them, he establishes them, all words about God's sovereign hand down to the last molecule in the universe God's sovereign over.
Accidents don't occur. There's no such thing as luck. There's no such thing as fortune. There's no such thing as serendipity, even though I love the word. It's the sovereign hand of God. He says some other things, too.
Look at 1 Timothy, who alone possesses immortality. He doesn't die. He's the only one having immortality. So if you've got this problem that's temporal, certainly this God, if he was only temporal, might not outlive your problem, but here's this immortal God, he never dies.
He's also holy, too, who dwells in unapproachable light. Psalm 104 says he covers thyself with a light as a cloak. So if God's not worried, you ought not to be worried. Let me tell you some things that I found this week that God's not worried about.
Number one, very practical. God is not worried about the moral state of the United States, nor any other country. God is not worried. God did not fall off the throne. His leg fell asleep and he fell off the throne last Monday with a gay marriage.
Didn't have enough power. Didn't have enough, I was a king of kings and lord of lords for a while, but I'm just, I don't know what's gonna go on. They're taking the Ten Commandments out of things. They're doing this, they're doing that.
I always get invited to the West Boylston School system to attend, but I never get invited to pray because my guess is I probably would say Jesus Christ, maybe. Of course I would. But God's not worried.
Arnold Toynbee, who wrote the acclaimed 12-volume study of history, once said, quote, of 22 civilizations that have appeared in history, 19 of them collapsed when they reached the moral state America is in today.
And he died in 1975. Think about, you've come a long way, baby, in the last 30 years. God's worried about the state of America. He's not worried. Number two, very similarly, what is God not worried about?
He's not worried about current events. God isn't worried about the presidential elections and who gets in. He's not worried at all. He knows only one vote counts anyway, his vote, so he knows he's going to have the right person in.
Doesn't mean he agrees with their character. He's not worried about the war. He's not worried about the Muslim takeover of the entire continent. In many countries, and sometimes entire portions of the Middle East, he's not worried about that.
Turn to Psalm chapter two for a minute, and I want to just show you how calm God is and how sovereign God is and how he's the blessed and how he's happy and he's not anxious. And he's assured that he's on the throne.
I don't know why the sovereignty of God isn't preached more often in churches across America. Although one man said what we love in ourselves, we don't like in God. We're all little sovereigns. I was talking to John Cristoforo today and you can see kids playing in the sandboxes and you can tell they're made in the image and likeness of God because when I used to play in sandboxes and I had army guys, they were all green army guys, the molded green guys, but these guys were designated as bad guys, these guys were designated as good guys.
This guy here was a hero and he was me and he wasn't called Michelle, by the way, either. They destroy things and attack and prisoners and all these things and my team always won and God has put that in our nature and our fabric as image bearers and we are little sovereigns.
So then why do people despise, not all of course, but despise what God is and who he is and what he does? He's the sovereign. And here we get a little peek of his sovereignty in Psalm chapter two, verse one.
Why are the nations in an uproar? People's devising a vain thing. They don't like God. The kings take their stand. Rulers take their counsel together against Yahweh and his anointed. Let us tear their fetters apart.
Get me the first person and the second person of the Trinity's shackles off me, man. We're free. Cast their cords from us. And I love it in verse one. The psalmist says, why? It's almost like, why could anybody do that?
How could anybody do such a thing, go against the God of the universe? They're in an uproar and it's not new. It's almost like with the Tower of Babel. Remember the Tower of Babel? We're gonna be God and we don't need you, God.
And you remember the amazing thing about that story? Let me just read to you Genesis 11, five. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the sons of men had built. You think there's humor in the Bible?
You can read that and go, let's see, you guys are building something to take over my power. And let's see, where are you guys again? The Lord came down and kind of saw what they were doing. This is amazing.
Get the microscope out, I can't see this rebellion. And what does it say in verse four? The Lord scoffs at them. He has them in derision. You know what this word really means? It means to mock by imitating what the people say.
So I can use this as example. I'm not a very good, I'm not good at this, but I'm gonna do it anyway so you get the point. The fool says in his heart, there's what? There's no God. And it's like God is up there going, there is no, no, no, no, no God.
And he's up there going, ah. That's the exact word. He scoffs at them. Everybody's looking at me like, Abner, don't do that next time. You're right, you're not good at that. It's a stammering, imitative thing.
I almost said, you have to love me. It's like a marriage till death do us part, right? Is God worried about the future? Number three. Does God worry about tomorrow? God's not worried about tomorrow. He's not worried how you might have enough retirement money, what your health might be, what your job might be, your finances.
The littlest things even concern God. Proverbs 16, 33, the lot is cast into the lap, but it's every decision is from the Lord. You can roll a dice till kingdom come and every time God gets his number.
All right, here's a big one. I'm gonna push this. God is not worried about the salvation of your loved ones. For those of you that have kids who aren't saved, for those of you that have husbands who aren't saved, wives who aren't saved, grandparents who aren't saved, God is not worried about their salvation because God always gets his own.
You don't have to worry. Isn't that so good? I don't have to worry that my sister is going to get saved. Now, should I exercise responsibility and pray and preach the gospel? Yes, but God isn't worried.
If God's not worried about the universe, God's not worried about anything like this, your neighbors. Turn to John chapter one. We had Scott read that this morning. God isn't worried because God is not waiting for the human will to respond.
God is the initiator of salvation. To put it in Ephesians chapter one terms, why would God be worried about the salvation of your spouse in time if he knows he has already chosen them before the eternity passed, had his son die for them in time past, and then will in future regenerate them by the quickening of the Holy Spirit?
He's not worried. Now, of course, you can be concerned to the point where you preach the gospel and you say, God, I'm gonna pray for their salvation every day of my life. Amen. We sang a song today. You've ordained the ends as well as the what? Means, but God is not up there biting his fingernails saying, oh, I just can't believe.
I've done everything. I've begged and I've pleaded and I've been like a gentleman knocking at the door of their heart and they keep saying, no, what am I to do? I should have had a B8. You know, there's all kinds of things, no.
Luther said to the humanist Erasmus, he said, your thoughts of God are too human. God's not human. God saves everybody that he's elected. God saves everybody that his son has died for. And John chapter one, thankfully, because I have loved ones who, if you could talk somebody into getting saved, they would have been talked into.
But it's God's job to save. And worry sometimes says, God, you're not saving my spouse fast enough to please me. God, your timetable is, you know, God, I know you're slow to anger and long and suffering, but I'm not.
And I'm apoplectic down at Stop and Shop when there's three people in line. And it says you can only have 12 things there. And that person in front of me has got 13. And, you know, and that's how we treat God.
When we say, if you say, God, save my husband, save my wife, amen. If you say, God, you haven't saved him. What are you trying to do to me? That might even say, well, he's trying to sanctify me. But if you say, God, I'm so worried about my spouse.
I'm so worried about my kids. I'm so worried about my friends, my neighbors. Then I want to make sure I show you this great God again, who is the blessed. He's satisfied. He's content. And John chapter one, verse 12, for as many as received him, to him they gave the right to become children of God.
Even to those who believe in his name. Before the Jews had rejected him, now as many, Gentiles too, amen. I'm glad for that. But people stop reading verse 12 because they like the receiving part. And people do have to receive Christ.
But they can only do that after verse 13 takes effect. Who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of what? Of whom? God. Don't be worried about who goes to heaven and who doesn't.
You can have concern as a loved one. If you see somebody perish in their sins, your soul should be weeping, but you don't have to worry about who goes to heaven and who does not. Jesus said in John six, no one can come to me unless the father who has sent me draws him and I will raise him up on that last day.
James chapter one, verse 18, in the exercise of his will, he brought us forth by the word. I don't want to have to worry about things I shouldn't have to worry about. It's kind of like Corrie ten Boom and the whole issue of the Holocaust and trying to help the Jewish people.
And before she got put in the concentration camps, she remembers going on a train ride one time. And she remember her father who was a watchmaker and he had this huge suitcase full of watches and stuff like that.
And Corrie was reading the newspaper. And she said to her father, she was little. And she looked at her father and she said, dad, I'm reading the paper about something called sex sin. What's sex sin? And her dad said, Corrie, Corrie, would you pick up my luggage on the way out?
Didn't say anything until they arrived at the stop. Would you pick up my suitcase? She tried and she tried and she tried to pick that thing up and it was too heavy. But dad, I can't carry that. Dad said to Corrie, that's just like what you asked me about in the newspaper.
When you're old enough to carry that, I'll tell you. Say, why wouldn't God pick my loved one? What about this? What about the timing? What about this? Or what about that? Don't worry. Be concerned and say, God, what would you have me to do?
But don't worry about who goes to heaven and who doesn't because God before eternity past knows and will affect that out. And I'm glad God broke through my free will to get me to heaven. Because my will said, God, I want to be free from you.
And I don't want to worship you and I want to worship me. I'll throw you a bone here or there. And God said, wake up, Col Abendroth. Here's a new nature that I gave you and I didn't ask pretty please with sugar on.
I'm going to call you out and make you like my son so other people can see what is done to somebody who's a wretch. And Paul, that's why he started saying, God, I praise you in 1 Timothy chapter one. Because he said, I used to kill people and God saved me.
If God can save Paul, he can save your wife. Can he? Last passage, Romans chapter eight. Time is fleeting. We could turn this mini series into a tome, but we better not. Romans chapter eight, verse 28.
Fifthly, God is not worried about getting us to heaven. God is not worried about getting saints to heaven. God is not worried. You know why he's not worried? One of the greatest verses of all the Bible.
Romans 8, 28. We'll have to see the context and security of Romans eight, but we'll just jump right in for sake of time. And we know, we experientially know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God and to those who are called according to his purpose.
There's no limits. It's all things. Did you see that? Let me give you some of the all things. He uses his word, doesn't he? He uses prayer. He uses the local church. He uses saints. Now let me show you some bad things that he uses.
How could God cause these things to work to good? Suffering, Satan. God uses Satan for his good. Matter of fact, Luther called Satan the hardest working being in the universe for God. Because everything Satan does is evil, but God takes that evil and turns it into good.
How about this one? Demons work together for good. And the best one of all that God's goodness can triumph over is sin. God causes all things to work together for good. You say, I have a hard time getting my arms around that.
That's okay. Welcome to the worship of the transcendent God. God, you're so big, I can't get my arms around you. Amen. Because if you could, it's time for Gulliver's Travels. No, I want to be shocked by God's bigness and greatness.
God causes all things. It's not deistic God or blind fate to work together. How do we know that? Because verse 29 tells us. Because everything is in accord with God's saving hand for whom he foreknew, technically he foreloved, is the word is predetermined choice to love.
He also predestined, he determined their destiny ahead of time to be conformed to the image of his son that he might be the firstborn among many brethren and whom he predestined. These he also called and whom he called.
These he also justified and whom he justified. These he also will take to heaven glorified. Where's your part in that? It's not there. That's why it's secure. There's no sanctification in there. That's right.
Because even though sanctification is important, here God is saying everything works together for good because one day you're going to stand before God face to face. And you know, there's no worry in heaven, is there?
I'm never gonna have to worry in heaven. I'm never gonna have to be anxious. My challenge to you this week is, if you think God is not worried, if you think he is on the throne, then don't worry. Take it from a friend, you don't need to worry.
I got all hyped up tomorrow. I'm having this nose surgery. This septum is deviated and can't breathe. And I thought, you know, I'm just gonna get this thing done. And all of a sudden you can just like those, ooh, it's general anesthesia.
Not everybody makes it. The doctor said to me, now I don't think I'm strong enough to do this. But when we're pushing on your nose and doing this stuff, I just have to tell you the precaution, the worst that could happen just for legal terms, that your nose back up here could be jammed into your brain and your brain fluid could come gushing out.
Like, ooh, I don't think this is gonna happen, but we could reconstruct the inside of your nose and there could be some big hole up there and we're gonna have to take skin from elsewhere from all parts of your body and build you the inside of your nose and reconstruct it.
Mark's over here laughing. And I just have to say, Lord, I don't wanna miss my kids. I don't wanna miss my wife. But if I'm in heaven, I'm not gonna miss them. And you gave me those kids and that wife.
And I think I could trust you to take care of them until you get them to glory. So why am I gonna worry? I just wanna breathe better. I think it might help my preaching some. I'll do anything. Last night I did dream, though, it was a horrible surgery.
And I thought, praise God, God has protected me from my own sin of worry by pushing it all off into my dreams. And Richard Baxter was asked, if you sin in a dream, should you confess it? Richard Baxter had a lot of time.
There was no internet. Richard Baxter did say, if you're feeding your mind things at the end of the night that would cause you to then think about those and then sin, don't do that. He said, and if you feel better, you can confess your sins that you've committed while you're sleeping.
But the real answer is you don't have to do that. So I just say, God, may you be glorified. You are going to be the blessed one. And I can't wait for tomorrow because here's my strategy. I wanna be focused on the Lord.
And so when they say, start counting backwards from 100 tomorrow, I'm not going to do it. I'm going to say, who is the... I might even say it out loud, who knows? I'm just thinking as I go now, but I'm going to say at least to myself, who is the only blessed God, is the only sovereign.
He's the King of those King and the Lord of those... Father, thank you for our time today. We would all acknowledge that we commit the sin too often. We don't trust you like we should. We don't obey you like we should.
Father, we don't look back to the past to see your good provision throughout our entire lives of everything we've needed. We don't look up to see that you've blessed us in the heavenly places with every spiritual blessing through Christ Jesus often enough.
And Father, today, would you forgive us? Would you cleanse us? Would you prick our consciences this week when we begin to worry? So we can quickly say, God, forgive me. God, increase my faith. God, help me to trust you more.
And then Father, may we tell others about how you're a great God who has so much power and is so sovereign that you've never worried once. And that we have a wonderful Savior, Jesus Christ, who is tempted to worry, who is assailed to worry, who is assailed to take his eyes off of you.
And yet, even though he was humanly tempted, he never gave in even one time. We're thankful for such a great Savior and a mediator because we've worried, so therefore we don't deserve your kingdom. Yet because of Christ's perfection, Father, you have granted us that.
Thank you for having your Son live for us, die for us, and be raised for us. In Jesus' name, amen.