Do Not Worry
1 Kings 10:1-10
Psalm 147:1-14
*Matthew 6:25-34
What are you worried about? What are you afraid of? What gives you anxiety? Worry can be so pervasive these days that our whole lives can be consumed by it. There is no end to what we don’t know for sure, so there is no end to what we can worry about. Yet, as much as we convince ourselves otherwise, we know that worry doesn’t do us any good, in fact, it can shorten our life. We also know that we can’t just ignore the unknown, the dangerous, or what has gone and could go wrong because then we are eventually going to step into it. The only real way forward with the unknown around every corner is faith. Yet, this is not a blind faith. This is faith in a God whom we have seen prove his loving generosity again and again. This is faith in a God who is bigger than all of the brokenness and who continuously leads us out of it. This is faith in a God who wants to give us more than we imagine.
Our gospel reading today starts with a “therefore”. That is always a helpful note that tells us what came before is really important to the coming passage. Remember last week Jesus looked at how we should seek treasure in heaven, how we should serve God as our master and keep our eyes on him, because everything without him is fickle, deteriorates, or dies, but with Him we have eternal treasure as we too are eternal. That is what leads directly to Jesus telling us not to worry about earthly things.
Jesus then tells us we shouldn’t worry about food, drink, or clothing. He uses these examples because these are basic needs everyone has to live. As God takes care of these fundamental needs, he is trying to tell us that he will take care of even more. Jesus isn’t ignoring the other needs, he knows full well people are sick. The first thing he does after the sermon on the mount is heal a man with leprosy. He isn’t ignoring that people need community, because he is creating it right there in their midst and he has given it to us in the church. He isn’t ignoring the need for shelter, did you know that there was a biblical and societal courtesy in Jesus’ day that houses were supposed to house foreigners at least for a few days as needed? And we think our society is so far forward. Jesus is addressing all of our basic needs. Yet, at the same time, Jesus is saying look at all the things you worry about that aren’t your basic needs. Why do we worry about this situation or that, when it isn’t about what we really need? Yes, situations are complicated, but they aren’t about life or death, they aren’t about filling us or giving us God’s truly good gifts, so in many ways, they aren’t complicated.
Look at the birds of the air. They don’t plant crops or harvest them and they don’t gather food into barns and yet God provides for them. Very few birds have any way of preparing food for tomorrow. That means that every day they go out and gather their daily food and God provides for them. They live in trust and God meets them there. We have all of these ways of taking care of ourselves and providing. We plant, harvest, and store, we have grocery stores, fridges, cold rooms, canning and so much more. Yet, we can still worry. Don’t you realize that if God could prove himself faithful to the birds every single day and if he could feed Israelites in the desert with manna and quail, He will feed us now too? Don’t you realize how important you are to God? The sad reality is that we trust too much in our ability, our stores, and our jobs that we have forgotten what it means to trust in God - God the giver of all good gifts, the lover of our souls.
Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? It’s a question we should take seriously. Can worrying prolong our lives? No, in fact, science has proved that worrying does the opposite - worrying shortens our lives. Yet, we convince ourselves that worrying helps us to predict negative outcomes. Yet, again, it doesn’t. When something bad happens and we predict it, we think “Well thank God I thought of it”, but the bad still happens. When something bad happens and we don’t predict it, we think, “Oh if only I had thought about it”, but the bad would have happened anyway. If nothing happens, we can often convince ourselves that our worrying helped. The truth is that worrying doesn’t help. Thoughtfulness, prayer, and decisions do help, but not worrying. If you are faced with a problem, your first big question to ask in prayer is, “Can I change it?” If no, then there is literally nothing worrying can do for you. If yes, ask God, “How?” Then be decisive and act on it, but again worrying will not help with that decision or action, instead, it can often get in the way of decisive and trusting action. The key is to trust God in either situation, because he always offers us a way through it, even if it is uncomfortable.
The interesting thing is that worry is actually a form of self-torture that comes from the enemy. It comes from the natural distrust of the fickle things of this world, but it can only come when we unnaturally distrust the God who has and is continuously providing for our needs. This can only come from the enemy and how we let the deceiver hold sway in our hearts and minds. Let's look a little closer at how worry is self-torture in two situations: when something does go wrong and when something doesn’t. If you worry and worry then something does go wrong, do you realize what just happened? You were forcing yourself to experience the negative consequences twice. Naturally, you would experience them when something went wrong, but you also experienced them again and again, every time that you worried before the thing happened. You were putting yourself through torture. If nothing goes wrong, then you have worried for nothing. You were literally putting yourself through torture when you never had to experience it at all. Worry doesn’t make sense for our hearts or minds and it is definitely not what God wants for us, so it has to come from somewhere else.
Look at the flowers of the field, they neither toil nor spin and yet I tell you that not even King Solomon in all of his splendor was dressed like one of these. Think about that. King Solomon in Israel’s mind was the wealthiest, smartest, and most equipped man to ever live, yet God is telling us in this moment that all of that wealth, power, and wisdom never measured up to what God naturally clothes the flowers in. You see all those things that we so often seek after don’t actually fill us, they don’t actually measure up to what God gives us. I remember Russel Brand, a famous comedian, once said in an interview something like this, “I have everything I have ever wanted, success, fame, wealth, influence, and more, and yet it never filled that thing in me” - You see these things we long after, worry over, and strive for aren’t what truly fill us or envelope us, the thing that fills us is and has always been God. We are seeking after things in the far wrong place.
“You of little faith”. A hard indictment, but also a simple solution. To overcome worry and to find the Godly goodness, all we have to do is put more faith in God. Yes, we still plant, we still work, we still gather, we still make decisions and act on them but the primary thing driving us in our action is trust and faith in God. Faith is knowing that the end result, even if it means walking through some difficult times, is going to be God’s amazing provision and bounty. Of course, the world worries and runs after these things, because pagans don’t know our God. Like us, they know the things of this world will deteriorate, disappear, and die, so their solution is to fight for more in the little time they have. But we are different, we know a God who knows our needs, who loves us like a father, and who longs to bring us into his eternal goodness. So if we seek first God’s Kingdom and a right relationship with God, the natural result is that we will find ourselves in his eternal goodness, which means we will find ourselves with all of these things we long for and more.
Struggles are, sadly, a natural consequence of a broken world. They will come, every day. Tomorrow will be the same. There is no point worrying about them as you just need to work through them as they come and God will help you through even when we can’t work through them on our own. We have to trust that and pray in those times.
The one last thing I want to talk about is maybe the most pervasive worry today and that is worrying about time and preparedness. In some ways, we make ourselves busier than we have ever been. People are so busy that they constantly worry about having enough time. The first thing to realize is that not everything has to get done and you don’t have to go to or be on time for everything. That is a part of trusting God again. We need to trust His hand and provision when it comes to our time and work. It is we and our culture who set these priorities and create these worries about timing and what needs to get done, but they are not necessary or from God. Plenty of cultures exist without these expectations. Even if the things we are running after are all good things, they are not the important things and so we have to have faith and trust God as he shows us the way through and he shows us priorities: what we should take time for, what we should stop, and what needs to take a back seat.
So, do not worry. You don’t have to worry about your fundamental needs, so you don’t have to worry about anything else either. Instead, pray, contemplate, act in faith, and know that God will meet you there with provision and love. We know and we can see that we have a loving God who gives us so much, so even when hard times come, we know he will help us through. Though everything else in this world may disappear, God never will and so we can hold onto Him. We can step out in faith knowing that he will meet us there and that is more than enough. AMEN
