Sunday Sermon: Do Not Be Anxious (Matthew 6:25-34)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a New Testament book.

On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament, and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday. Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. Here's Pastor Gabe.

Matthew 6:25-34 and the Call to Trust God

These are the words of our Lord Christ as written by the Apostle Matthew. Matthew chapter 6, beginning in verse 25. 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 his 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? O 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 all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, as we come to your word, I pray that we are reminded and we are confident of the sovereignty of God over all of creation, that you sit enthroned over all, that there is nothing that is happening outside of your will or beyond your hand.

Nothing has occurred that you have not ordained. And so we know that as you reign over all things, we put our trust in you. We have confidence for the days that are to come. We're able to look at today and take care of the things that need to be handled today.

Letting tomorrow be anxious for itself, not letting the past haunt us, and not even being anxious for the present, but we are secure in Christ. He is our confidence, our hope, and our peace. And it's in the name of Jesus that we pray, and all God's people said, amen.

Thank you. You may be seated. There is one particular word that shows up in this section over and over again. In fact, we're looking at 10 verses here. This word appears six times, and you probably know what that word is already.

The word is anxious. It comes from the Greek word meromnao, which means literally to be divided. It means to be distracted. It means to be pulled apart in two different directions. And we have this word come up six times in this particular passage.

In fact, we have three sections that are even given here in these 10 verses, and all three sections begin with, therefore, do not be anxious. Verse 25, therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious. Verse 31, therefore, do not be anxious.

Verse 34, therefore, do not be anxious. So what do you think the instruction is that we have in this particular section? Do not be anxious. Do not be divided. Do not be pulled apart in two different directions.

Now what would those two directions be? Well, look at the very first word that we have in this section, Matthew 6, 25, therefore. A common teaching instruction that I hear in some of the pastor classes that I have taken has been whenever you see a therefore, you need to look and see what the therefore is there for.

So that therefore is continuing a previous thought, and what was the thought that we concluded with last week? Look at verse 24. No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and money, or literally mammon. Mammon was a Chaldean word. It was the personification of your stuff. It's as if your money and your treasures and your things gained sentience and stood up and became a living being, and that being's name was mammon.

And your entire life was all about that being. How do I please mammon? How do I be friends with mammon? How do I get mammon to give the stuff to me that mammon's got? I want mammon's stuff. And God says that you cannot serve both him and mammon, because either you're going to be devoted to the one and hate the other, or you are going to love the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve God and money. This creates a division of conscience, of passion, of love, of desire, of even adoration. So that when we get to verse 25 and Jesus says, therefore I tell you, do not be anxious when you understand that that word literally means to be divided, you understand what you're being divided into.

I'm divided between wanting to please God, but I also, I want the stuff of the world. I want to please the world. I want people to like me. I want to gain the world. I want to achieve. I want to accomplish.

I want the hopes and dreams. And so when you think, when you're trying to find ways that you can please God is kind of like your secondary goal, but everything primary is how I can have this world. You're divided in two different directions and you cannot serve God and money.

Jesus gives that first before he then goes on to say, therefore I tell you, do not be anxious. If you're trying to please God and you're trying to please the world, you're divided. And you know what that causes?

Anxiety, right? Exactly what Jesus is saying here. Don't be anxious. You try to serve two masters, causes a lot of stress, causes anxiety, causes division in the heart, causes unrest. It causes this feeling of like, nothing's ever enough.

I feel like I have to strive. I feel like I have to go, go, go. I have to do, do, do. When is this master satisfied? When am I satisfied with this master? And so we have this instruction come up repeatedly here, to trust in God and do not be anxious.

As we're going to divide this up today, we're just going to take it by the three sections that are divided up by therefore. So we're going to look first at, therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, which begins verse 25.

Then the second part will be verse 31, therefore do not be anxious saying what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear. And then we'll finalize this with the final therefore in verse 34, therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow.

So let's come back again to verse 25. 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. And then as Jesus goes on in this instruction here, he divides those things up into those respective categories.

What you will eat and drink and then what you will put on. He says, is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Is not life more than food? So what is your greatest concern supposed to be but with your own life?

What are you doing with your life? Who has your life? What have you devoted and committed your life to? In Luke chapter 9, Jesus says that if anyone would be my disciple, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow after me.

Whoever tries to save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. And this is not talking about being martyred. The cross is an instrument of death and you're taking up your own cross and following after Christ.

You are putting your needs, your desires, specifically those things that you want in your flesh to death and following after Christ. One of the ways for me as a husband and as a father that this is directed to me specifically in that role is given in Ephesians chapter 5 where it is said, husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

So in that very instruction on being a husband, I'm being told that I need to die to myself, my own needs and my own desires, and I need to look to the needs of my family. I need to look to how I can sacrifice for my wife and build her up and encourage her, not going about the things that I want, but looking after her needs.

As the head of my household, caring for the needs of my own family, how do I raise my children in the training and the instruction of the Lord? Maybe my desire today is to sit in front of the computer all day.

I got to die to myself and give my time and my life and my commitment to my family. So that's an example of how me and my life, I die to myself and consider the needs of others. But overall, Christ is saying to us here that our service is first to him before it is to anyone else.

So we are dying to our own desires and our desire instead with a new heart and a new mind that has been given by the Holy Spirit of God is to live a life of service that is pleasing and acceptable unto God.

Something I'm doing in my own personal study over the course of this past week is studying that word worship and understanding what worship means. One of the things that I've come to realize in studying the word worship, the way that we find it in the New Testament in particular, because that's the testament that's given to us in Greek, that word worship is represented by more than one Greek word.

There's actually several different Greek words that might be translated in English to the word worship. And each one of those Greek words has a different meaning or significance. For example, when we read in Matthew 4, when Jesus is being tempted by Satan and he's responding to Satan's temptations with the word of God itself, the last response that Jesus gives to Satan is, Well, that word worship there that's translated from the Greek is literally to bow before.

So you will bow only before the Lord your God. But then if you look at Romans 12, 1, and you have the instruction there that in view of the mercies of God, you are to present yourself as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.

And this is your spiritual act of worship. That's a different Greek word for worship there. And that word for worship actually means to serve. So we have one word for worship that means to bow down. And we have another word for worship that means to serve.

So what we see ultimately here through these various ways in which worship is communicated to us through the New Testament is that we are to have a reverent attitude of service before God. And true worship to God is more than just what we typically think of worship, coming to church, singing songs, singing praises, or even doing our devotional lesson or our prayer time.

Worship is more than this, but worship is living our whole lives unto God. Jesus Christ has given his life for you as an atoning sacrifice. And so according to this instruction in Romans 12, 1, you are to give your life to God as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, holy, meaning that you no longer walk in your sin, but you walk in holiness unto God.

Jesus has said here in the Sermon on the Mount, the very last verse in Matthew chapter 5, verse 48, you therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. For as God said to Israel in Leviticus chapter 11, you will be holy as I am holy.

And then Peter puts that before the entire church in 1 Peter chapter 1. You must be holy as God is holy. So to walk in holiness means to put off the desires of the body and the mind in which we once walked, as it says in Ephesians chapter 2, and instead we are to live lives of holiness set apart from the world, consecrated before God and doing what God asks of us to do.

Romans 12, 2 goes on to say that we desire his good pleasing and his perfect will. How do we know what the will of God is? It's according to his word. When you read the word of God, the Bible, you know what God is doing and you know what he wants you to do.

And what he calls for us to do is die to ourselves and live for him, that our lives would not be for ourselves, but for God. Hence why Jesus says here, is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?

What are you living for? Are you living for food and clothing? Is that it? Is that all you're living your life for? How am I going to eat today? What am I going to wear today? How am I going to climb the corporate ladder today?

That's all that you're living for? Life is worth more than that. Your life has to be about more than those things that perish. That which Jesus has just previously said is destroyed by moth and rust. Later on he's going to say the stomach destroys the food.

It goes into the body. It's destroyed by the stomach. It's expelled. That's it. So, what good is living life for these things that are ultimately coming to waste, if you'll pardon the pun? These will not ultimately satisfy us if we live our life according to these things and not according to Christ.

Jesus says to his disciples, don't fear what man can do to you. Man who can destroy the body and after that can't do anything else. But fear him who after destroying the body can destroy both the body and soul in hell.

Yes, I tell you, fear him. So we must live our lives to God, living lives of holiness to him, and that's more important than living for any of these things that are in this world. Now, of course, we're physical creatures.

We're physical and we're spiritual, but as we still live in these physical bodies, you need physical things. You need food. You need clothing, unless you're Isaiah and God is telling you to walk around naked for three years.

Side note, he's not telling you to do that. So you need clothing. Please wear clothes. God knows that you need those things and he will provide them for you. Going on into verse 26, 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? Are you? Are you more of more value than birds? Yes. I know you don't think I'm asking for a response, but I was there.

We are. We are of more value than birds. Thank you, Jessica. You know, when I first met my wife, she had a flip phone. Anybody remember the flip phone? It's almost a piece of technology we don't think about anymore until we're watching a TV show that's like 12 years old and everybody on the show has flip phones, you know?

So when I met my wife, she had this flip phone and when you open the flip phone, this was before you could really take these startling pictures on your phone and stuff like that unless you really, really, really wanted to fork out the big bucks.

And so really all you had was just, you know, you could hold 10 pictures on there or something. You can make your own little background. It was probably a background that was pre-programmed into the phone.

You've got a couple of menu options there. But hey, if you wanted to personalize it, you could put your own little personal message on there. So right in the center of the screen around your clock and your menu options, everything else, you could have a little personal message on there.

And I still remember what my wife's personal message was on her phone when we met and when we were dating. Yes, I was snoopy enough even when we started dating to open her phone and look at her phone.

But I still remember what the message was. Do you remember what it was, babe? Do you remember? Yeah. Three words, God feeds birds. That was the message on her phone. And it was her constant reminder that she had every day that she opened her phone that God takes care of birds.

And aren't you of more value than birds? So God is going to take care of you. Are you not of more value than they? Your heavenly father feeds them. That's huge. Jesus is not just saying here, God feeds them.

Your father feeds the birds. Your benevolent, loving, heavenly father above in glory is taking care of you. He knows his children. He knows them by name. You are not forgotten. He is caring for you. Look at the next verse, verse 27.

And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? Have you ever benefited from being anxious before? Chris Rice wrote a song a number of years ago in which he said that time is our currency and everyone has exactly 24 hours each.

So how are you going to invest the time that God has given to you? Are you going to invest those hours toiling and struggling and striving and being filled with anxiety and stress and when you get to the end of the day never actually feeling like you've gotten to the end of those things that you were trying to accomplish?

But now my body is too tired to continue, so I have to lay down and sleep. All those hours that I didn't accomplish today, at least the time carries over to tomorrow and I've got some extra hours tomorrow that I can try to achieve the stuff that I didn't get done today.

Is that how time works? You probably go to bed thinking that. We apply that mentally to all kinds of stuff, right? I'm going to catch up on some reading. You either read or you don't read, but you're not catching up on reading.

It's the same amount of reading that you have to do that you didn't get done yesterday. I'm going to catch up on some laundry. I'm going to catch up on some sleep. Sleep or don't sleep, but you're not catching up on sleep that was missed.

Either do it or you don't do it. We all have exactly the same amount of time that we have to invest in every single day and when you get done with today, the hours that you didn't wisely invest today, you don't get bonus hours tomorrow.

The hours that you had today, that's it. The hours that you get tomorrow, same hours that you had the day before. So which of you by being anxious and by worrying, which of you by being divided, being split into two different directions, which of you by compounding the stress on yourself into getting the stuff done today that I didn't get done, how many of you have added an hour to tomorrow by all the stress that you had today?

Have you ever added a single hour to your life by being anxious? This is basically Jesus saying it's of no value. There's no value or benefit in being anxious. There's no value in benefit in serving two masters.

You might think, hey, if I serve two masters, I get more money, right? I'm going to try to serve God in money so I can get all the spiritual benefits and all the material benefits. No, once again, you're either going to love the one or you're going to hate the other.

Which one are you going to give more attention and devotion to? Which one do you think that you have to please more to get more of what you think that you need in this life in order to get by? God is the one who provides all things.

So whatever you need, God will give it to you. And the things that you strive for physically cannot provide for the things that you need spiritually. So look to the one who is spiritual, who is God, who will give to you both the things that you need in this life and the things that you need in the life to come.

You cannot add a single hour to your life by being anxious. So be devoted to God, rest in him, and he will take care of you. Now as I said to you last week, hey, I'm rooting for you when it comes to pursuing your hopes and your dreams.

I hope you climb the corporate ladder. I hope that you achieve that promotion. I hope you invest yourself wisely, take the money and the things that God has blessed you with, invest it accordingly, and maybe make more money, that you may have something that you can give to somebody else, that you may help to benefit those who don't have as much.

The instruction that Jesus began with in Matthew chapter 6, give to the needy, but when you do so, don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing. Don't do it to receive the praise of men, but give that you are serving your Father who is in heaven above.

So I hope that you receive something in this life that you may benefit and give to somebody else, but in whatever it is that you do, do it all to the glory of God. Remember according to what is said in Colossians chapter 3, you serve God first before you serve man.

And as Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 10 verse 31, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it to the glory of God. Amen? So do all things to God's glory. Don't do those things thinking that you're serving those things in order to gain some sort of satisfaction or rest or relaxation from that, because you're not going to get any rest from work.

You get rest from Christ. Jesus later on in Matthew chapter 11 saying, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. We find our rest, our comfort, our satisfaction. We are fully satisfied in Christ alone.

The Lilies of the Field and the Glory of Solomon

Verse 28, this is where Jesus gets to the section of clothing. He says, 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.

This is not just grabbing a random example from the Old Testament and then, you know, look at Solomon. Solomon was a great king, but even in he and all of his glory was not arrayed like one of these. There's a very specific reason why Jesus would select Solomon.

What is it that Israel wanted? They wanted to be like the empire that Israel was back in the days of Solomon. Forty years of peace and prosperity, can we have that again? We were not under the oppression of any other ruler like Israel was at this time under Rome.

We were not being oppressed by anybody else. We were our own empire and we were the admiration of the world. People were coming from the north, south, east, and west here to see all the riches and wonderful blessings that we had all around us.

Queen of Sheba comes up, she looks around, wow, look at all the treasures you have. She listens to Solomon, what great wisdom you have. All of the people benefit from the wisdom of Solomon. So they have the blessings of God, they have the wisdom of God that is given to us, and they're the envy of the entire world.

That's what Israel wanted to be. Make Israel great again. That's what the people wanted. Our Savior and our Messiah is going to come to make us great again. We want to be like the empire that we were under Solomon, and yet Jesus says here, look at the lilies of the field.

I tell you this, even Solomon, all of the wonderful splendor and wisdom and everything that he had in all of his glory, he was not arrayed like one of these. Even the wonderful glory and splendor that Solomon had was not as impressive as the flower that has been made by God.

Consider also Ecclesiastes in that Solomon looked out over all of his possessions, all of his land, everything that he had, and what did he say about it? He worked for it. He said, I have put my hands to everything that I can put my hands to.

I have put my mind to everything that I can put my mind to, and you know what I have found in all of this stuff that I've put myself to? Vanity. Nothing. It's chasing after the wind. That's what Solomon said.

And so here Jesus is saying, is that what you're committing yourself to? Did you not learn from Solomon in Ecclesiastes? He achieved far more than you will ever achieve in your lifetime, and all of his greatest splendor was still not as lovely as the lilies of the field, who neither toil nor spin and look at their beauty.

Solomon's gone. That empire is gone, but you can still go find a beautiful lily. And yet even the lilies, Jesus goes on to say here, 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. Now, Peter reminds us in 1 Peter chapter 1 that we are also but grass, and the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of the Lord remains forever. The grass itself is going to be bundled up and it's going to be thrown into the oven, and you know what?

So will some of mankind. A day of judgment is going to come in which some of mankind will be gathered up and thrown into the fire. Who will be those who will be saved? But those who have put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ.

We will not suffer the judgment or the wrath of God, but we will be delivered from that judgment when it comes against all evil and unrighteousness in the world, and we will have everlasting life with God.

Jesus is making a direct connection here with that. And putting trust in God and living for him, will he not much more clothe you? Oh, you of little faith. Clothe you in what? He will much more clothe you.

He will clothe you in even more than what Solomon had. Clothing you in what? Well, he gets to that in the next section. So this is the first section, which went from verses 25 through 30, and now we get to the next section in verse 31, which begins with our next therefore.

God will 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? There's the summary of everything else that we had looked at in the previous five verses.

For the Gentiles seek after all of these things. Unbelievers seek after food and clothing, stuff like that. Like as far as you are concerned being called to holiness and service to God, your pursuit of food and clothing and anything else doesn't separate you from the Gentiles.

The Gentiles go after that stuff. So if your desire is to just eat and drink, and that's the stuff that you commit your life to, and even how I can have more of these things, or how I can have the richest of these things, you're not doing anything different than what the Gentiles do.

Your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all. That you need food, you need drink, and you need clothing. So what does Jesus say that you are to be about instead? What is it as far as holiness goes?

Holiness meaning to be called out or to be set apart, to be consecrated for. What does God call us to in holiness that makes us different than the Gentiles, that makes us different than unbelievers in the world?

Verse 33, seek first the kingdom of God. Seek that which is imperishable. Not the stuff that perishes, not the stuff that wastes away, not the money that you can then spend and now you don't have it anymore.

But seek those things that you always have that cannot be taken from you, and even when this life is over, you will still have. And that is the kingdom of God forever in glory. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.

Going back to that question again, will God not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Clothe you with what? More than the clothing that you have, more than even everything Solomon possessed, God will clothe you with righteousness.

As I said back when we were in chapter 5 and verse 48 where Jesus said, you therefore must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. I said to you there what God demands of us, He gives to us. He demands righteousness of us.

And He gives righteousness to us. It's not a righteousness that is our own. It is the righteousness of Christ. Seek first the kingdom of God. Seek those things that are above where Christ is. Paul puts it that way in Colossians chapter 3 verses 1 through 4.

Seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are here on earth, for you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. So seek those things in glory. Where the stuff that happens here on earth cannot take away from you the treasure that we have in glory with God above.

Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness that He will clothe you with. 2 Corinthians 5 .21 says, For our sake He became sin who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

If you have faith in Christ, your sins have been imputed to Christ on the cross. He has died for those sins and He has paid for those sins. The price that you owed for your rebellion and sinfulness against God, Christ paid for with His death on the cross.

By faith in Him, not only are your sins atoned for, but you've received something else. You have been given the righteousness of God. So that when God looks at you, He no longer sees the sinful self that you were.

But He sees the righteousness of His Son that you have been clothed in. And now God receives you and loves you with the same intensity that He loves His own Son. Romans 8 .29 describes Christ as the firstborn of many brothers.

There are many more that were going to come. Jesus Christ died, was raised again from the dead, that He may be the firstborn of many brothers. And all of us who believe in Him, we are likewise adopted into the family of God.

And we have been clothed in this righteousness. We've been given new garments. The question that I ask my kids whenever we talk about righteousness, what is righteousness? It's best understood by looking at those first five letters of the word.

It's doing what is right. R-I-G-H-T. Right. Righteousness. But it's not just doing what we think is right. See, the world is going to tell you what they think is right. And the world might even tell you, you do what you think is right.

But it's not doing according to what the world says is right. It's not doing according to what you think is right. It's doing according to what God says is right. He has called us to holiness, and we cannot be holy.

If it was left up to us, we would fail, we would die, we would perish. He calls us to holiness, and He gives us the holiness of Jesus that we may walk in righteousness upright and holy before Him, offering our bodies as living sacrifices unto God.

Again, Romans 12 .1, this is your spiritual act of worship. Live in righteousness. Live as a citizen of a kingdom that is not of this world, but is of the kingdom of God forever in glory. We are not yet in glory with God, but we are to live as citizens of that kingdom now, as strangers and exiles here on this earth.

Living in righteousness. All the things that we need, as long as we are in these physical bodies, God will provide for us. Before we get to the last therefore, consider the words that Jesus has said in John 14, verses 1 through 3.

Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, I would have told you that I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.

I remember watching a Q &A between several teachers one time, and all of these teachers were women. Don't ask me why I was watching it. Actually, it was because a friend of mine had sent a link to me and said, hey, this teacher said this thing, and it sounded pretty off to me.

Listen to it and tell me what you think. I ended up watching the entire Q &A. And at some point in the Q &A, these teachers started arguing with one another. It was in jest. It was in good humor. But they were arguing with one another about the proper interpretation of John 14.

In My Father's house are many rooms. And one teacher was saying, well, this means condos. And another one said, I'm getting a mansion. In My Father's house are many mansions. And so they were arguing about what it was, the proper interpretation.

And I'm listening to this, and it was actually kind of sad. Because it's like you're missing the whole point. The point is not about what we're going to get in heaven. One of the teachers even said, heaven is about God giving the very best to us.

So now we're arguing about over condos or mansions. Well, I'm not going to disagree that heaven is about the very best that we can possibly receive. But what is the very best? Christ. The argument sounded like the very best stuff that we have on earth is even better stuff that we're going to get in heaven.