Anxiety vs Sovereignty (Pt 2)

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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October 19, 2014

My Pathway to Calvinism Pt 3

00:01: Remain standing and open your Bibles and we will read the text for today, going to be in Matthew, Chapter six, we're going to be reading verses twenty five to thirty four.
00:15: We're in the second part of this sermon we began last week, the title is Anxiety Versus Sovereignty and will begin in verse twenty five.
00:28: This is Jesus speaking in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount.
00:32: Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink or nor about your body.
00:42: What you will put on is not life more than food and the body more than clothing.
00:48: Look at the birds of the air.
00:50: They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns.
00:52: And yet your heavenly father feeds them.
00:55: 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 your clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.
01:10: They neither toil nor spin.
01:11: Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
01:18: 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 clothed? You owe you of little faith.
01:33: 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.
01:41: And your heavenly father knows that you need them all.
01:45: But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
01:55: Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.
02:01: Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
02:07: Our father and our God, we thank you that you have given us this opportunity to gather around your word.
02:14: To hear it proclaimed, and I pray first and foremost, as always, that you would keep me from error as I know that I'm capable of preaching error.
02:30: And I pray that you would also, Lord, encourage the hearts of your people to hear your word and obey it.
02:39: And Lord, if there are among us those who do not know the Lord.
02:44: We pray that this would be used of you to draw your people to yourself and that you would receive all glory and honor is our prayer in Jesus name.
02:58: Amen.
03:15: One of the most memorable events which occurred in the Old Testament was when Abraham was called by God.
03:28: Take your son, your only son, whom you love and sacrifice him on Mount Moriah.
03:43: I've often tried to imagine the story.
03:47: I've often tried.
03:48: I've oftentimes tried to put myself in the place of Abraham called by God to do the unimaginable.
03:58: You've waited years, decades for this child.
04:05: This is the child that I have promised you.
04:08: And now you're going to take him up onto the mountain and slay him as a sacrifice.
04:17: Most of you know the story and you know that God kept Abraham's hand from slaying Isaac.
04:24: But there's a statement that is made in that story there in the 22nd chapter of Genesis.
04:33: There's a there's a statement that's made there.
04:38: And you may have heard people say this.
04:43: They'll say Jehovah Jireh, Jehovah Jireh is a modernized version of what Abraham said to Isaac when Isaac asked him, father, where is the lamb? You know, they were ready to sacrifice.
05:05: They had the bundles of sticks for burning.
05:08: They had all of the tools for the sacrifice.
05:10: But Abraham was telling Isaac, come, we're going to go up on the mountain to sacrifice.
05:14: And Isaac looked around.
05:15: He said, well, I see the I see the wood.
05:17: I see all the tools.
05:18: I see everything, but I don't see a lamb.
05:23: And so he says, where is the lamb? And Abraham's response, Jehovah Jireh, the Lord will provide.
05:41: That little statement certainly had a contextual meaning when it was said from Abraham to Isaac.
05:51: But it also has a much broader application.
05:59: Because, beloved, the Lord still provides today.
06:06: And part of what we proclaim as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ is that we have a father in heaven who loves us.
06:16: We have a father in heaven who has promised to provide our needs.
06:24: We have a father in heaven who does not look upon our helpless estate with any type of derogatory face, but instead looks upon us with a loving countenance.
06:41: And so Jesus, in the midst of the Sermon on the Mount, he turns to his disciples and he says, do not be anxious about what you will eat or what you will drink or about your clothes or about your body, what you will wear.
07:07: And as we mentioned last week, Jesus is referring to the necessities of life in contrast to what he had dealt with before that.
07:18: In verses 19 to 24, Jesus dealt with the luxuries of life.
07:24: Do not store up for yourself treasures on earth.
07:30: Do not have an abundance that you don't need, but rather share what you have.
07:34: Don't don't store for yourself at the expense of others.
07:38: Don't be luxurious in your lifestyle.
07:41: That was verses 19 to 24.
07:43: But then in verse 25, he changes to the necessities.
07:46: And even those things which you need, even those things which you have to have to survive food and drink and shelter, which is represented in clothing.
07:59: He said, even those things that you need, don't sit and worry about those things because Jehovah Jireh, the Lord, will provide.
08:12: Now, I spent a lot of time last week on the issue of the difference between righteous concern and unreasonable worry.
08:22: And I don't want to recap everything.
08:24: You can certainly go back and listen if you were not here.
08:27: But there are things that we are we are in scripture allowed to concern ourselves with.
08:31: We concern ourselves with unbelievers.
08:33: We want to share the gospel with them.
08:34: So we we go out and share the gospel with them.
08:37: We concern ourselves with the sick and the hurting and the orphan and the widow.
08:40: And we and we we go to help them and we love them.
08:44: But we don't sit and wring our hands and wonder if God is sovereign.
08:48: We don't sit and wring our hands and wonder, well, God will be done.
08:52: We trust in him.
08:53: That's what gets us through the day.
08:55: That's what gets us through the life is a daily reaffirmation that my anxieties are the result of my doubt in the sovereignty of God.
09:04: And when my understanding and trust in the sovereign fatherhood of God goes up, my anxieties and doubts and worries go down.
09:14: And it is very much like a seesaw as my trust in the anxiety or as my trust in the sovereignty of God goes up, my anxieties go down as my anxieties go up.
09:25: My trust in the sovereignty goes down.
09:27: And that's that's a seesaw.
09:28: Right.
09:29: I want to make sure I kept thinking teeter totter.
09:32: Is that also OK? OK, yeah.
09:34: But that's a one goes up and the other comes down.
09:39: So the goal of these two messages back to back is to express to you a very simple truth.
09:46: God is sovereign.
09:49: He provides.
09:52: It doesn't mean we don't have to go to work every day, and it doesn't mean we don't have to actually labor because that's part of what we're called to do.
10:00: It's a mandate.
10:01: If we don't work, we don't eat.
10:02: But the reality is we don't sit and wring our hands about whether or not we will have what we need for.
10:09: God has promised to meet our needs.
10:12: So that brings us to today.
10:13: That was last week in a nutshell.
10:16: Now we move on to verse 30, because now Jesus is going to offer a rebuke.
10:22: So far, he has reminded us about God's providence.
10:26: He's reminded us about God's sovereignty.
10:28: He's saying you've seen the birds of the field.
10:30: You've seen the birds in the air.
10:32: You've seen the lilies of the field.
10:33: Know that God cares for them.
10:35: Know that God calls them.
10:37: He will do the same for you.
10:39: Now he's going to get more confrontational.
10:46: Jesus did not mind challenging people in regard to what they said they believed.
10:53: Jesus did not mind stepping on people's toes.
10:56: I always get very frustrated when I see people paint Jesus as sort of a sort of a wimpy character, sort of a sort of a just sort of a almost almost effeminate male kind of just walking around with, you know, sort of I think Jesus was a very bold creature.
11:15: And I think when he spoke, as it will say at the end of the Sermon on the Mount, he spoke as one with authority and he spoke powerfully and he got in people's faces.
11:26: Excuse me.
11:30: He got in people's faces.
11:33: When it was an issue that was worthy of their rebuke and he did not hold back from rebuke, so we see in verse 30, he says, but if God so close the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven.
11:53: And by the way, that's that's the picture that's going on there is something that went on in the ancient world, especially in that particular area of the world.
12:00: There wasn't a lot of wood to kindle.
12:02: There wasn't a lot of things that they could burn.
12:04: So a lot of times they burned grass to heat their ovens and to cook with and things like that.
12:09: And so it's very common that when these wildflowers would spring up and then they would die, they would collect them and use them as as part of their cooking.
12:16: And Jesus said, you know, this this is this is for a day.
12:19: It springs up for a day.
12:20: It's burned the very next day.
12:22: He said, if God cares enough to call them, will he not clothe you? Oh, you of little faith.
12:33: Then he goes on in verse thirty one.
12:34: 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.
12:45: We see here two rebukes.
12:48: Number one, he rebukes them by saying, oh, you of little faith.
12:52: That's a very common rebuke of Christ.
12:54: He uses it in regard to his disciples several times in the Gospels.
13:01: It's very common for Jesus to be in a situation where the disciples are doing something they ought not do or they're asking questions that they ought to know the answers to or they're not trusting in something that they ought to trust in.
13:14: And he just looks at him and he says, oh, you of little faith.
13:21: Now, I want to address a question which may come into our mind.
13:25: We know that faith itself is a gift from God.
13:31: I mean, the Bible tells us for by grace, have you been saved through faith? And that is not of yourselves.
13:36: It is the gift of God.
13:37: And that which is referencing back to is referencing to that whole preceding line.
13:43: Grace, faith and salvation, all is a gift from God.
13:49: We know that the Bible tells us that it has been given to us not just to suffer with Christ, not just to believe in Christ, but also to suffer with him.
13:56: That's when you read that construction in the Greek, it's very clear that the believing has been given to us the ability to believe.
14:04: Jesus said, no one comes on to me unless the father who is in heaven grants it to him.
14:09: Faith itself is a gift from God.
14:11: So how then can Jesus challenge us for having little faith? Well, let me explain it to you, because I think it is very simple.
14:21: Faith is a gift from God, but it is a gift that we exercise.
14:25: It is a gift that we participate in doing.
14:29: I've often said God gives us the gift of faith, but he does not believe for us.
14:34: God gives us the ability to believe, but he doesn't believe for us.
14:37: And that's one of the things people often get confused about in regarding reformed theology, because we say faith is a gift.
14:43: They think that that means God is doing the believing.
14:45: No, he's not.
14:46: We believe just like God gave Lazarus the ability to walk out of that tomb.
14:51: Lazarus still walked out on his own two legs.
14:54: It's the ability given by God to do this.
14:56: But it's Lazarus who's doing the walking.
14:58: So, too, is us doing the believing.
14:59: Thus, when God has given us this gift of faith, he's given us the ability to believe and we are not exercising that gift.
15:05: He can look at us and challenge us and rebuke us for not exercising the gift that we've been given.
15:14: It's like when we don't exercise our muscles, they become loose and they become they become soft and they become very weak.
15:27: You look at somebody whose body is very weak and you say, oh, you have a little exercise.
15:32: All right.
15:32: I mean, that might be what you say.
15:34: I mean, you might not say it out loud, but.
15:39: You see someone who walks in their arms, can't touch their hips because they they've so gone to the gym and they spent so much time pressing against the weights that their arms are bulky with muscle.
15:54: You say, oh, you have great exercise.
15:56: Again, you wouldn't say just that way, but that's what you're assuming in the same way with faith.
16:02: If we do not exercise our faith, if we do not actually practice what we say we believe and let it become a reality in our life, it will become weak and useless.
16:17: What good is faith if it's never exercised? What good is faith if it is never stretched? That's what persecution is.
16:25: According to Scripture, it causes us to stretch our faith.
16:28: It causes us to have to use our faith to actually have to trust in God.
16:33: Sometimes we are faced with persecutions.
16:35: The Scripture tells us sometimes we're faced with suffering just so we will mature just so that through the suffering we grow to be like Christ.
16:48: So when Jesus challenges, oh, you of little faith, he's saying here you have this great gift that God has given you, and yet you are not using it to its full potential.
17:03: You're not even exercising it to increase the strength of it, but rather you are letting it grow weak and useless.
17:15: So that's a pretty strong rebuke from Christ.
17:20: But then he rebukes them on a second level, because the first rebuke is you of little faith.
17:27: And then the second level, he says in verse 32, rather, for the Gentiles seek after all these things.
17:41: Remember, the Sermon on the Mount is being preached primarily to Jewish listeners.
17:46: And if there was one thing a Jew did not like to be called.
17:50: It was a Gentile, Jews did not like to be identified with the Gentiles, and the reason why was this wasn't necessarily always because they were pious gasbags like the Pharisees, because, I mean, that was part of it.
18:09: Some of them were very were just were just religious hypocrites and Jesus challenged them.
18:14: But even the even the rank and file Jewish person didn't want to be identified with the Gentile for this reason.
18:21: According to the Jewish belief system, the Gentiles were without God.
18:27: Remember here, all Israel, the Lord thy God, the Lord is one.
18:30: There is only one God and there is none like me.
18:33: Remember, God said that in Isaiah 46, he says, I am God and there is no other.
18:37: I'm God and there's none like me.
18:38: So when a Jew was was was compared to a Gentile, what was the comparison? You're living like a person who doesn't have a God.
18:51: That's offensive to a Jewish person, but that's Jesus's point.
18:57: He said, if you live in constant worry, if you live constantly wondering where your next meal is going to come from, constantly wondering where you're next going to get another another drink, constantly worried whether you're going to have the clothes to wear, then how are you any different than the Gentiles who don't have God? You're living the life of a practical atheist.
19:21: You're living the life of a practical atheist because you're saying you don't have a God that you can trust in.
19:27: You're saying you don't have a God that you can rely on.
19:30: You're saying that your God is not strong enough to provide your needs.
19:33: You're living like an atheist.
19:41: You know, I heard I heard a guy this morning, this very morning, he said something.
19:44: I said, I'm going to say that today.
19:45: Listen to this guy preach on the catechism.
19:48: And it was just he was preaching on the first commandment.
19:51: First commandment is have no the gods before the Lord.
19:54: And he said this, he said, we use language of atheism all the time.
19:59: You don't realize you go around, tell people good luck.
20:02: Guess what? That's atheistic language, because, number one, if God exists and he's sovereign, there is no luck.
20:11: There is no such thing as luck.
20:14: And the idea that we go around and say, and I know it's a colloquialism and I know we say it not often thinking what we mean, but think about words.
20:21: Words have meaning.
20:23: Words matter.
20:24: Men are going to prison.
20:25: Men are having their heads cut off because of words.
20:29: They matter.
20:32: They really do.
20:35: We go around.
20:35: Good luck.
20:36: This good luck that I had a lucky day.
20:39: If God is sovereign, there is no luck.
20:41: If God is sovereign, there is no chance.
20:44: The Bible says the lot is passing to the last, but it's every turn is from the Lord.
20:49: Many are plans of a man's heart, but the Lord directs his steps.
20:53: God is sovereign.
20:56: And when we live like luck, when we live in that kind of life, like we just think things just sort of happen out of nowhere.
21:03: We're living like atheists.
21:05: We're living as the Jews would have seen the Gentiles as people without God.
21:12: And we ought not do that.
21:15: We joke around here, we say we don't have potlucks anymore, we have pot Providence.
21:21: But there is no luck.
21:23: It's God's Providence, it's God's it's God's sovereignty that we trust in, not luck.
21:34: There's no such thing.
21:38: So Jesus is rebuking his hearers and by extension, all of us.
21:43: For not exercising the faith in the God that we say we believe in, we say we believe in God, we ought not worry, we say we have a God who is our father, we ought not worry, we say God is the sovereign of the universe and he cared enough to send his son to die on the cross for us and his blood has paid our sin debt and he has given us a new life.
22:05: His glorious and blessed righteousness, then we ought not worry.
22:11: And that's Jesus's point.
22:12: It's a rebuke.
22:13: It's a loving rebuke.
22:15: It's a gentle rebuke.
22:16: He's not calling us like he sometimes called the Pharisees, you hypocrites.
22:21: But he's still rebuking us.
22:24: It's still a rebuke.
22:26: It's a loving, fatherly rebuke.
22:29: There's still a rebuke.
22:33: And then he redirects the conversation in verse thirty three, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you.
22:50: Now, I want to go to the end of that sentence and give an exposition of that first.
22:54: All these things in context, all these things refers to your needs, because that's the context of the statement.
23:05: Jesus said, don't be don't be worried about what you're going to eat or what you're going to drink or about your body, what you're going to put on.
23:11: And then he goes on to say.
23:14: Seek first the kingdom of God and all these things, the the direct antecedent of these things is the necessities that he's mentioned before.
23:24: So that's that's linguistically inarguable.
23:27: But why do I make that point? Because the health and wealth guys, they grab a hold of this verse, they extricate it from its context.
23:41: And they apply all kinds of nonsense to the phrase, all these things, they say, if you seek after God, he'll give you all these things and they'll bring up all kinds of Maserati's and mansions.
23:56: And I don't have another M, but that's OK.
23:59: All kinds of stuff.
24:02: And it's all about wealth and luxury and power and influence.
24:07: And as long as you seek first the kingdom of God, all of those things will be added under you.
24:11: Well, let me tell you this about that.
24:16: If you seek first the kingdom of God, those things will not even be on your radar.
24:26: The whole idea of growing your own kingdom, if you're seeking first the kingdom of God, your kingdom will take a backseat.
24:36: And that's the problem with health and wealth.
24:37: Gospel is it's all about building my kingdom.
24:39: Why have a mansion in heaven when I can have one right here? Why do I need angels wings when I can fly in my own jet? You know, Jesus said, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness.
24:58: That part's often left out.
25:06: What does it mean to seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness? What does that mean? Well, I want to give you four things, because if you think, what does it mean to seek the kingdom of God? That's right.
25:21: It means to be about the business of God.
25:24: If you think about when Jesus was in the temple at 12 years old and his parents found him after three days, he'd been he'd been away from them and he found him after three days.
25:35: And what did Jesus say? I must be about my father's business.
25:41: It's why I came.
25:44: Why didn't you know where to look? Wouldn't you know that I'd be right here teaching in my father's name and my father's house? Then, you know, this is that's what I'm here to do.
25:52: My father's business.
25:55: So when we see the phrase seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, what it's saying, in essence, is that our goal should be to be about the father's business.
26:06: And what is the father's business? I've written down four things.
26:11: Certainly we could we could expand this list out and we could exhaust ourselves.
26:14: But on four things, I want to simply put these into your mind.
26:19: One, we seek the celebration of the kingdom.
26:23: In worship.
26:25: Number two, we seek citizens for the kingdom in evangelism.
26:32: Number three, we seek camaraderie in the kingdom through through fellowship.
26:39: And number four, we seek the calling of the kingdom through our individual ministries that are gifts of the Holy Spirit.
26:49: So we seek the celebration of the kingdom, the citizens of the kingdom, the camaraderie of the kingdom, the calling of the kingdom.
26:55: That's what we seek.
26:58: That's the priority of life, worship.
27:07: Evangelism, which I mentioned this on Wednesday night, for those who haven't been coming to the worship series, I encourage you to come.
27:12: But I just want to tell you one thing I said, everything revolves around worship, because why do we go out and evangelize? To make worshipers, why do we fellowship with one another to motivate worshipers, motivate one another? Why do we serve one another to minister to worshipers? The goal is that we all be able to come together with one voice and one heart and worship our one God.
27:43: Beloved, you know, when you miss church, you know what you do.
27:47: You rob the church of your voice, you rob the church of your presence, you rob the church of your gift, which has been given specifically to you for the ministry in the church.
28:02: That's why being in church and being a part of the body is so vital, because you have been put here for a reason.
28:09: Our sovereign God has placed you here.
28:14: And when we're not here, we have taken away what God has put here for a reason.
28:22: It should be a priority.
28:27: And yet it often isn't.
28:29: We hear the words, seek ye first the kingdom of God and their song, seek ye first the kingdom of God.
28:34: We we hear it.
28:36: We say it.
28:37: But do we do it? Is the kingdom of God a priority in our lives? Is his righteousness a priority in our behavior? And I do believe, as John MacArthur said, that the righteousness which is referring to here can, of course, relate to the righteousness of Christ given to us.
28:56: But it also can relate specifically to our practical progressive sanctification.
29:00: We're seeking after Christ in being like him.
29:05: Does that matter to us? Does that matter to us? Is the kingdom's priorities our priorities? May I say that I don't think it often is.
29:26: How often do we worship God for an hour and 15 minutes on Sunday? Then it's not a priority.
29:37: Do we not worship God daily in prayer and Bible study? Do we not seek that other people would worship the same God we do through evangelism? When was the last time you spoke to someone about the condition of their soul? So I don't know how to I don't know how to share the Bible.
29:57: Let me tell you, I don't know how to share Jesus.
30:02: You may not be the most eloquent evangelist in the world, but if you are saved, you have a call from God to tell other people about what saved you, who saved you.
30:14: And you don't have to be the most articulate person in the world.
30:17: As one man described it, it's just one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread.
30:23: That's all evangelism is.
30:24: It's one beggar telling another beggar where he found the bread.
30:29: As the one man said when he was brought before the Sanhedrin, I don't know the answers to your question, but this I do know.
30:36: I was blind and now I see.
30:41: You're not going to answer every Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens that comes your way.
30:46: You're not going to have all the answers for all of these guys whose minds are expanded out into secular philosophy.
30:53: You won't always have the answer, but you can always have the gospel.
30:57: And the gospel is simple, that we are sinners and that we are in desperate need of a Savior.
31:03: And Jesus Christ is that Savior.
31:09: Beloved, this is the kingdom of God.
31:12: This is what we've called to do, been called to do to make it a priority.
31:16: But is it really? Is it really, you know, we pray our father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name.
31:33: Your kingdom come, beloved, that's a petition.
31:42: We're asking God.
31:45: Lord, may it be that your kingdom come in this world.
31:50: May your kingdom come in the hearts of lost men.
31:54: May your kingdom flourish in the hearts of saved men.
31:57: May your kingdom overshadow the church and the church be so concerned with the priority of the kingdom that we don't have time for the minutia of life and all the stuff that doesn't matter.
32:11: And beloved, this is how it applies to worry, because if you are so concerned with the priority of the kingdom, all these other things won't be on your mind.
32:19: You won't have time to worry about that stuff because you're going to be concerned with Christ.
32:28: My food doesn't last to the end of the week.
32:30: We fast, concern ourselves with Christ.
32:37: That might be a weird thing that you just heard me say.
32:41: The reality is, when do we ever fast? You know, if we fasted one day a week, we take out one seventh of all of our food bill.
32:49: We don't.
32:51: I'm not saying that's why you should fast.
32:53: I'm just saying we we don't concern ourselves with the kingdom.
32:56: We don't seek after the disciplines of the kingdom.
32:59: We don't seek after change.
33:00: And we wonder why nothing changes.
33:04: We wonder why nothing happens.
33:06: We wonder why the world is continuing to go to hell.
33:10: And we come into the clean, comfortable, air conditioned room and we sing songs for an hour and we hear a man shout at us for an hour and then we go home and nothing changes.
33:32: If that's the case, then it's not a priority.
33:36: It's an accessory of life.
33:41: And when Jesus is just an accessory and when his kingdom is not our priority, then we will always be worried about other things.
33:53: We will always sit anxious about other things.
33:57: But when Jesus becomes the priority, when the kingdom becomes the focus, when his righteousness becomes the very thing for which we yearn, we won't have time to worry about the minutiae of life.
34:19: He goes on to say in the last verse, verse thirty four, therefore, therefore, what does that mean? Based on everything I've already said, here it is.
34:32: Do not be anxious.
34:34: He said this now four times.
34:36: Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.
34:44: Sufficient for today is its own trouble.
34:49: Beloved, isn't that so true? Don't we ruin good days by worrying about upcoming bad days? Don't we ruin positive experiences by being worried about something that may be negative tomorrow? I love what John MacArthur said about this particular verse.
35:11: He said God doesn't give us tomorrow's grace today.
35:15: He gives us grace for the day.
35:19: And if we're worried about tomorrow, we are essentially assuming on God's future grace, which he hasn't given us yet.
35:27: He gives us grace for today.
35:34: Where do you see that in Scripture, Pastor? Well, I read it already for our call to worship.
35:40: Lamentations three twenty two.
35:42: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.
35:46: His mercies never come to an end.
35:48: They are new every morning.
35:59: The Apostle Paul sums up this whole section of Christ in one short verse or two short verses in Philippians.
36:09: Philippians four, six and seven.
36:11: Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything.
36:17: Now, stop there.
36:18: Everything, in everything, in good and in bad, in wealth and in poverty, in much and in little, in sickness and in health.
36:32: In everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God.
36:46: Do you have a need? Do you have a necessity that you believe that you lack? Take it to God.
36:53: Cast your cares upon him because he cares for you.
36:56: He is Jehovah Jireh.
36:58: He is the Lord who provides.
37:01: And he does call us to trust in him.
37:05: And verse seven says the peace of God.
37:10: Which surpasses all understanding.
37:16: Will guide your hearts and minds.
37:19: In Christ Jesus.
37:23: Now, I want to finish with one thought throughout this message, I've been commending.
37:34: The fact that if God is your father, you do not need to live an anxious life.
37:40: If God is your father, you need to seek first the kingdom of God and know that God will take care of you, that he is the Lord who provides.
37:47: But I want to end with this thought.
37:50: And it may seem like I'm taking a hard left, left if you don't know Christ, if you are not a believer.
38:10: And God is not your father by faith in his son.
38:17: You have every reason to worry the key to Jesus's words.
38:25: He says, do not be anxious for your father who is in heaven knows your needs.
38:31: But beloved, if you're not a believer, God is not your father.
38:35: God stands as your judge, but here's the blessing.
38:41: The Bible says whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord will be saved if you're sitting today as an unbeliever, if you live as a practical atheist, if you live a life of constant worry because you don't have trust in your father in heaven because he's not your father in heaven, then I call you to repentance and faith for the only way to have the peace which passes all understanding.
39:14: It's through the prince of peace, the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever.
39:23: Amen.
39:24: Let's pray.
39:27: Father, I thank you.
39:29: I thank you for the opportunity to preach your gospel.
39:32: Lord, this is always a blessing.
39:37: And I pray now, father, that the words that have been preached will go forth into the hearts of your people and make a difference in their lives.
39:48: That believers would understand the priority of the kingdom and how we ought to be seeking first the kingdom and and to be about the business of God.
40:00: And father, for those who do not know Christ, they would understand that they have every reason to be anxious, both in this life and in the next.
40:12: And that the only way to know peace is to know him who is peace and joy and forgiveness, our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ, and it's in his name we pray.
40:28: Amen.
40:30: Beloved, stand with us as we sing.
40:32: And if you have a need for prayer, you may come as we sing.