Our Trinity Season for 2007 is about to come to an end. Next Sunday is the Sunday Before Advent; “Stir up Sunday”, the day when the Christmas pudding is first put together in the English tradition. Through these months, as we’ve reflected on passages from various books of the New Testament, we have again and again been reminded of those great qualities of spirit which are the hallmarks of the Christian faith and the Christian temper: faith, hope, love, and peace. These are the main things that our Good Shepherd would have dominant in our lives, for His own glory and for our own good and blessedness.
It is necessary for us to be reminded of these things, over and over through our lives, because there are elements of the world in which we live that militate against these spiritual qualities all day long, every day of our lives. Jesus, our great Captain, is mindful of our enemies and our weaknesses and so He instructs us in how to deal with one of these enemies in Matthew 6. That enemy is worldly care, otherwise known as worry. The lives of people all around us are filled with worry about earthly concerns: money, food, clothing, retirement, etc. Whole industries are based on cultivating worry among the consuming populace. Certain political movements are based on worry, constantly harping through the main stream media about this crisis and that crisis. The mustiness of worry is in the very air we breathe.
It is impossible for us as Christians to live lives of love, joy and peace if we allow ourselves to be captivated by the worry inherent in our culture. Thus, Jesus speaks to us these wonderful words about worry. Every bit of it is instructive, but this evening I break it up according to the three times that Jesus says the words “take no thought,” which means, “do not worry.”
There are three reasons why we as the children of God, the
The first reason why we should never – and that word is not too strong – never worry, is based on what is true about us as Christians. We are God’s redeemed and adopted children, and this God, who has made Himself our Father, giving us a relation with Him unique in all the universe, is the God of the creation in which we live. Jesus points our minds to the birds and the flowers and bids us reflect upon the attention our Creator has given to them. He then instructs us to reason from the lesser to the greater. If God cares and adorns such lesser creatures, is it not irrational to think that He would do less for us, who are the very crown of His creative work and the very object of His Son’s dying love? Are we not much better than they? Are we not more important in God’s concerns?
It is true that, being made as we are and called as we are to labour for our needs, we are different from the creatures in the manner with which God provides for us. Jesus, by no means, wants us to equate freedom from worry with irresponsibility. The very humanity that exalts us above the other creatures carries with it an obligation to use our talents to provide for ourselves. Living in this fallen age, it is still true of us, as with all men, that we must eat our bread by the sweat of our brows. God told Noah, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest … shall not cease.” Our need to plow and sow and reap and gather into barns for our supply is both a practical necessity and a duty. But Jesus argues that we are to live as those confident that the Creator who cares for all his creatures will provide for us through our God-given means and we have no business worrying about whether we will have what we need. We labour, but we trust that God will give the increase.
Jesus ends this part of the chapter with the words, Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? He rebukes us, does He not, for not believing as we ought. To worry about such things is not to use the brains and the faith the Lord has given us. It is sad that, for many people, the only faith they have is for the things of this life. They look to God to provide for them, but they neglect their spiritual needs. But, for those of us who have flown to Christ for our eternal salvation, we can then neglect to trust Him for that which is of this earth. Is that not absurd? How can we think that the God who so loved us that He gave His only begotten Son for us will not provide us with our next meal? Indeed, the reason we worry is because we don’t think about such things. A little faith is an unthinking faith. Our faith grows in the exercise of our minds in reminding ourselves of what God tells us is true about us and about Him in His Word, such as He does here in Matthew 6. Jesus is here trying to encourage our faith by challenging us to get our thinking caps back on. Look at the birds! Look at the grass of the field! What do you see? And in the vernacular, we could go on to add, “Well, duh!” Where’s your faith? You worry because you do not think and you do not remember what is true about you in God’s sight.
But let us go on to the second reason Jesus tells us to take no thought for our lives. The first is what is true of us; the second is because of what is true about God. He says two things. One is a theological statement and the next is a promise. Our God, our Creator, is our heavenly and omniscient Father: “your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.” We easily believe God knows all things. Well, let us go on to the logical conclusion: he therefore knows about our every need. Combine that, logically, with His loving Fatherly heart for us – the heart that nailed His own Son on the cross of
Now, it is true that there are times when we suffer in this life. In those times we are sorely tempted to doubt God’s loving care. It is very easy, being the weak and sinful creatures that we are, to be captivated by the cares of this life; to be bound up with the chains of fret and fear. But that is precisely the time for us to take ourselves in hand and do what Jesus is telling us to do here: to think, to remember. Faith has to have something to work with. It needs the truth of God, and we find that truth in His Word. We have to talk to ourselves and say the same kind of thing that David had to say to himself now and then: “Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God, for I shall yet praise Him who is the health of my countenance and my God.” We have to remind ourselves of the goodness of our loving, heavenly Father.
But not only do we go to the Word to remind of us of God’s attributes and character, we go there for the explicit promises that the God-Who-Cannot-Lie makes to us. This is especially strengthening for our faith. Jesus tells us forthrightly: But seek ye first the
And we are not yet finished. Beside the reasons of our identity as God’s children, beside the truth of who God Himself is, we have in conclusion one more, very practical, reason that Jesus gives us for not worrying. He says, Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Jesus reasons with us that we should not worry because it is a waste of time and energy. The Lord knows us, He knows what it is like to live in this world, He knows our weaknesses, and He knows our limitations. And in His wisdom, about human life and all His purposes for us, He tells us to live one day at a time. All our times are in His hands, and He has so made us and our world, that we only live one day at a time. That’s the way it is. He also tells us through
So much of our earthly worry is about something that does not exist today, and indeed, may never exist, because we may be gone from this earth by the time the morrow comes. We worry over the consequences of the past. We worry over the needs of the future. Why? What good does it do? Such worry only distracts us and tires us in what we have to do today. And that cannot be good for the future. It is certainly not good for the present. As Jesus, the One greater than Solomon, says, we have enough today. Be content with today’s troubles; why should you want any more; why be greedy for more troubles than you already have? Trust God for today. That’s all we need to do. If we will just do that, and do it day by day, we will find in the end that we have trusted God all our lives and we will know the fruit of having lived a life free from debilitating fear and worry.
The people of this world, outside of Christ, have good reason to worry. They are in the gravest of dangers; they face the judgment of God with no hope. As long as they refuse to receive God's gift of salvation to them, they should be worried. We, as Christians, however, by virtue of the grace of Christ and the renewing work of the Holy Spirit, have received that salvation and its gift of faith. And having that faith, we never have to worry because we never have to have little faith. We can strengthen our faith by listening to our Saviour’s words and using our heads about them. We can have the comfort of the joy and peace that comes from our faith by feeding our faith on the truth and promises of the Word of God, about ourselves, about God Himself, and just about what makes sense.
Brothers and sisters, let us pray for each other that we will not forget this. It is very hard work to not worry, sometimes. But it is good work. As we must gain our earthly bread by the sweat of our brow, we must also gain nourishment for our faith by the sweat of thinking and believing, of watching and praying. But though it take sweat, the bread is the blessing of God. It is His prospering in our lives. It is His faithfulness, His kindness, as He leads us and fits us for the home He is preparing for us. Our time in this worrisome world is short. Let us not be overcome by it, but let us instead, through our Captain, overcome the world, even by our faith. Amen.
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