Some Problems No.2 Anxiety

2 Kings 4 There we read of a mother who is full of anxiety because her child falls very seriously ill. We pick up the reading from the 18th verse and if you have the A.V. then perhaps you'd like to join in reading the odd-numbered verses. 2 Kings 4, and I commence at verse 18.

And when the child was grown, it fell on a day that he went out to his father, to the reapers. And when he had taken him and brought him to his mother, he sat on her knees till noon and then died. And she called unto her husband and said, Send me, I pray thee, one of the young men, and one of the asses, that I may run to the man of God and come again.

Then she saddled an ass and said to her servant, Drive and go forwards like not thy riding for me, except I bid thee. Run now, I pray thee, to meet her and say unto her, Is it well with thee? Is it well with thy husband? Is it well with the child? And she answered, It is well. Then she said, Did I desire a son of my Lord? Did I not say, Do not deceive me? The mother of the child said, As the Lord liveth and as thy soul liveth, I will not leave thee.

And he arose and followed her. And when Elisha was come into the house, behold, the child was dead and laid upon his bed. And he went up and lay upon the child and put his mouth upon his mouth and his eyes upon his eyes and his hands upon his hands and he stretched himself upon the child and the flesh of the child watched warm.

And he called Gehazi and said, Call this Shunammite. So he called her. And when she was come in unto him, he said, Take up thy son.

Amen. You might like to turn in your Bibles to the first epistle to Peter, the first epistle of Peter and the fifth chapter. We're looking at a statement in the seventh verse.

And if you haven't a New Testament with you, then you'll find it written out on our news bulletin. Casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you. I was at the early morning prayer meeting yesterday.

And as we were engaged in intercession in the rear room or one of the rear rooms of this church, it came to me with some force that I ought to continue along the line that we had taken up last week and speak to you about anxiety and peace of mind. You remember that our particular passage for consideration last Sabbath morning was plucked from the Psalm, Psalm 55. Cast your burden upon the Lord and he will sustain you.

And here is the fisherman, Peter, taking that verse and employing it, just modifying it a little, but it's basically the same. Quoting it as he writes to a group of people who are going through tremendous difficulties. And in the closing comments of this rather lengthy letter, at least by our standards of correspondence, he says, cast all your care upon him, the Lord Jesus, for he cares for you.

You know, that word care or rather that word cast is found previously in scripture in a little incident that you've no need to turn to, but I quote it because it helps to set the whole thing in context. The Lord Jesus directs his disciples to find an animal on which he can ride into Jerusalem. And so two of them go their way and they procure the particular beast.

And we read in the 35th verse of Luke 19, and they brought it to Jesus and they cast their garments upon the colt and they set Jesus thereon. Casting all your burdens upon him, all your cares upon him. Exactly the same word and the same tense in the original as in this descriptive act of taking their outer garments off and placing it on this colt, saddling it in effect for the Lord Jesus to sit on and thereby to ride into the holy city.

Now it seems to me that many of us need practically to do what the disciples did only with our burdens. We are to cast them upon the Lord and we are assured that he cares for us. So our subject this morning becomes treating the anxiety complex.

And once again I want to use the same simplistic approach to my text as I did last week. And let me tell you that I want to address you on first of all examining this directive. Casting or cast our care upon him is the command.

And then I want to consider with you how we respond to such an imperative as this. How do we cast our care upon the Lord? And finally let's look at the incentive which this text provides. He cares for you.

Examining this directive then, cast all your cares upon him. Last week you remember I suggested that there was a sort of trinity of worry which affects the majority of people. There is concern about things.

And I quoted the story of Mary and Martha and how one of those sisters was so cumbered about by many things, the cares, legitimate cares of the domestic scene preventing her from exercising spiritual discretion and benefiting from what Jesus had to say. Concern about people. The psalmist knew that when he invoked the help of the Lord because well his son Absalom had led a rebellion against him and things were very ugly and unpleasant in Jerusalem, the city from which he had had to move away like some fugitive.

And then thoughts. Poor old Timothy. He was always distressed and depressed by thoughts that almost tyrannized him and paralyzed his evangelistic effectiveness.

And so the apostle writes a pastoral letter to him and he says, Timothy my son, God has not given you the mind of a timid man, but a sound mind. And you're to treat your worries. You're to treat your anxieties.

It's in these areas of things of people of thoughts that anxiety and burden and tensions pile up. But as I examine this particular directive where it tells us to cast all these cares upon the Lord, let me make one biblical qualification and it is this. That all tension is not necessarily an unhelpful thing.

And nowhere in the Bible does it say that we shan't have some tensions and some problems. Tension in itself to a degree can be a most helpful thing. You take for instance by way of an illustration a violin string.

If it just settles limply upon the bridge and the player comes along with his bow and he starts to play the instrument, the string will not emit the sound. It will not register the note that the musician wants it to give forth. There must be an amount of tension for the violin string, the violin strings to play the melody which the musician desires.

And so it is within our own lives. There are certain tensions which we accept as part of the bundle of life which we must know if we're going to be effective as soldiers of the Lord Jesus. The Lord God does not want us to be flabby people.

He wants to play a delightful melody upon our lives. And therefore there will be some tension. There will be some burden.

There will be some problem which comes our way. The Lord Jesus, He provides this corrective in His own life when in Luke's Gospel in chapter 12 we read of Him referring to His own life's work and the great concern that He has to fulfil it. Verse 50, I have a baptism to be baptised with and how I am straightened till it be accomplished.

I am just like the string of the violin and the tension is right. It must be there or else I shall never achieve the divine objective in my entrance into this world. It's not tension that the Bible is here referring to when it gives the imperative, cast all your cares upon Him.

It's strain and strain and tension are not synonymous. Strain, my friend, is excessive tension. It's having so many difficulties and problems piled upon you that you're paralysed and cannot do efficiently any one task.

Now the man of God, the servant of God is particularly prone to this condition. If he, if she is sensitive then they want to be engaged in any number of projects and the possibility is that we can put a nervous strain upon our bodies that Almighty God never intended us to bear and then we're in difficulty. So Moses, here he is conducting what really were a rabble through the wilderness of Sinai.

He's already had to do business with Pharaoh. He's gone through all the pressures of the release of the Hebrews from the Egyptian bondage and in the wilderness he finds that these Jewish people are a quarrelsome bunch, again saying a disobedient people is the Aves description of them. He tries to cope with all their quibbles, all their quarrels on his own and ere long he's so spent of nervous energy that he's asking God to take his life from him.

Excessive tension. You get the same experience in the life of the Tishbite, Elijah. There he is.

He's done a tremendous feat in the service of God. He's been at the pinnacle of the mountain you remember and fire has come down from heaven and the water-drenched sacrifice has been consumed and Elijah has demonstrated through his ministry of faith that the God of heaven is the God and that Baal does not exist at all. He's coped with the pressure of Ahab and his infamous, seductive wife Jezebel and now he's away in the wilderness.

He's lost all the difficulties have fallen upon his shoulders and he's come to the conclusion that there's only one true faithful servant of God left in Israel and it is him. He couldn't be further from the truth but as he reasons this way so he gets himself almost into a state of nervous apoplexy and he says, Lord my life's not worth living. Take it from me.

I'm no better than my father's. Take Jonah. Jonah this unenthusiastic evangelist who after being trained by God in a submarine eventually goes to Nineveh, a city larger than Philadelphia or Sydney and there he preaches and the people fall down in their streets and they respond to what he has to say and Jonah limps out of the city and he's absolutely flabbergasted.

No judgement is going to come. His reputation is at stake. This is what he has been preaching about that the God of judgement will come through Nineveh and he will raise that city to the ground but the people have responded and poor old Jonah gets so mixed up in his thinking.

His nervous anxiety just reveals itself as he also asks God to take his life from him. Excessive tension. Excessive strain in the service of God.

That is what we are directed to take to the Lord and to cast all our care, all that excessive load which our human frames cannot sustain. We are to leave it at the feet of Jesus. That excessive tension which blunts our evangelistic edge, which tarnishes our claims to live a holy life, which makes us a veritable pain in the neck.

Take that, says the Bible in the Old Testament and the New Testament and the Holy Spirit doesn't repeat himself for nothing. Take that care to the Lord. Well let's consider our response to this directive and it's good for us to do so.

This isn't being mechanical with scripture but there must be some methodology of releasing ourselves of undue tension or else that very word cast your care upon him wouldn't be used so precisely in the original. As I told you a little while ago it's the same verb as describes the disciples taking off their outer garments and putting it on that coat and saddling it for the Lord Jesus. Now in that way, which is a method, you are to take your excessive care and tension and leave it at the feet of the Lord God.

Well how do you go about it? Consider your response. Well take the example of Jesus. That's always a good starting point.

He was tense. The tension in the Garden of Gethsemane, you can feel it as you read through the Gospels as they narrate the incident. Here is Jesus facing Golgotha and all the horrors of being made sin.

Here is a man who's knowing strain if ever there was one in history and how does he express himself to God? Father if it be possible let this cup pass from me. You see the point? He's under strain. A load, a pressure is upon his shoulders and yet this thing he does not forget.

God is Father. Each day of our lives I believe we should say, Father into thy hands I commend my spirit. When we're under strain remember who God is.

And secondly in getting rid of excess tension, how about following the example of the Shunammite lady? She's got problems. Her child is ill, desperately ill. And so what does she do? Well she comes to the prophet and we read that before she actually meets the prophet she shuts her burden away.

She takes the little boy into the room that she has designated as being the prophet's own room and she closes the door and then she goes down and she meets the prophet. And that's the problem that confronts us so very often. We take our problems to the Lord but then we don't shut the door.

We keep the door ajar. We keep our hand upon the handle thinking that our presence is needed to be able to neutralize the burden that we have brought to the Lord. There is no safer place I argue to leave loved ones than in the hands of God.

When thou hast shut thy door, shut out from thee its anxious care with all its sharp temptations there for he is there. When thou hast shut thy door, shut out from thee its pain and grief, bereavements precious to the core, he gives relief. When thou hast shut thy door and left all there behind that wall of God's own care forevermore, he takes all.

When thou hast shut thy door, shut out thyself. He only, nothing for thee but to adore, he works within. Remember at a time of undue strain who the one is that you are casting your burdens before, the Father God who cares for you.

Recall the example of the Shunammite who left her dying child in the prophet's chamber and closed the door. And recall this, that God expects you to live one day at a time. This was one of the greatest problems that befogged poor old Moses and Elijah.

Moses was thinking not just about the day, but he was thinking about tomorrow. And he was thinking about the hangover, the legacy from yesterday. And this was creating great difficulties for him.

I remember during this week reading something that struck me as being extremely helpful. There are two golden days in the week upon which and about which I never worry. Two carefree days kept sacredly free from fear and apprehension.

One of these days is yesterday, with its cares and frets, all its pains and aches, all its mistakes, faults and blunders has passed forever beyond my recall. I cannot undo an act that I wrought, nor unsay a word that I said. All that it holds of my life of wrong, regret and sorrow is in the hands of the mighty love that brings honey out of the rock.

Save for the beautiful memories, sweet and tender, I have nothing to do with yesterday. It was mine, but it is gone. And the other day that I do not worry about is tomorrow.

Tomorrow, with all its possible adversities, its burdens, its perils, its large promises, there is left for myself then but one day of the week, today. Any man can fight the battles of just one day. Any woman can carry the burdens of just one day.

It is only when we willfully add the burdens of those two awful eternities, yesterday and tomorrow, that we break down. It isn't the experience of today that drives men mad. It is the remorse for something that happened yesterday, the dread of what tomorrow may disclose.

My friend, if yesterday and tomorrow your problems, let me remind you those are God's days. And your day is today, and sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. Remember then your call to live one day at a time.

And what is more, recall when you are casting your burden before the Lord. If it's a bit sticky, if it's hard to be unglued so that it will fall off from you. Remember the problems of other people.

The Lord turned the captivity of Job, says the book that bears his name, when he prayed for his friends. These are ways in which you cast your burden before the Lord, recalling the fatherhood of God, the nature of the one to whom you come. Remembering that your problem has got to be locked behind you as the Shunammite locked the door of her dying land.

Recall that yours is to live one day at a time. Remember the dilemma of others. Cast your care upon the Lord.

And then, finally, here is the incentive. He careth for you. There's an intriguing verse in Philippians 2, 20, where Paul is reflecting upon the fact that he wants to send to the church at Philippi a man who will continue his ministry.

And Paul is recollecting in his mind the person of his young colleague Timothy. And he says to the Philippians, I'm going to send Timothy to you. I have no man like-minded who will naturally care for your estate.

Not a man who will naturally care for you. Now, isn't that something that the Bible teaches us in both Testaments about God? Here is someone who naturally cares for humankind, for people like you and me. The Old Testament, when God was disclosing through Moses that he had a land particularly preserved for the ancient Hebrew people, he says this, there is a land which the Lord your God careth for.

The eyes of the Lord your God are always upon it. And in the New Testament, when Jesus puts down the teaching of the good shepherd, he contrasts the faithful shepherd with the one who is a hireling. And he says that he that is a hireling and not the shepherd does not care for the sheep.

The hireling fleeth not, but careth. Because he is a hireling and cares not for the sheep, I am the good shepherd and know my sheep and am known of mine. It's natural for Jesus to care for you and for me.

The story is told of a man in the First World War. And he got caught in the flight between no man's land and his own particular battalion where that was situated. He was mortally wounded.

And his friend was told by the commanding officer in no way was he to venture into no man's land itself and try and bring him back. But the soldier disobeyed orders. And he went and as a result he himself was mortally wounded.

But he crept back to his own ranks. The commanding officer said, well why did you do that? He is dead and you are dying. I've lost two good men.

For what reason did you go across no man's land? And the soldier replied, it was really worth it. Because when I got to my dying friend, his last words to me were these. I knew you'd come.

Casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you. Here is the Lord Jesus dying on the cross of Calvary. Why did he enter into the ranks of humanity? Why was he born into this world? Simply to show my friend that he cares for you.

Cares for the sin and the consequences of that sin that you have committed. Cares for the fact that without his offer of salvation you will be doomed not only in this life but in the next life. So anyone who is bogged down by a load of responsibility, who is burdened with undue strain at the moment, who is a Christian person, can turn back to the cross and say I don't believe that the burdens that I bear should be as heavy as this.

For God has shown me that Jesus Christ is designated as the great burden bearer. The one who cares for me. So I'm coming to him right now.

I'm coming to the Lord God. And I'm saying Father from your word, the Old Testament and the New Testament, I've come to the conclusion that the strain that I'm carrying in life is not what you would have me to bear. I'm coming to you and I'm divesting myself of this excess tension.

I'm recognizing that you are my Father and that you have a concern for me. And those undue anxieties and worries that baffle me and cause me to be like a dog that's chasing its own tail, I spin and spin around and around and get nowhere. I'm going to lose them and I'm going to be straightened out.

Father, I'm remembering that the sensitive Jesus died on the cross of Calvary to lift the burden of my sin and I'm going to rejoice in the peace that he gave. Lord God, I'm coming to you and I'm entering into the fullness of this scripture and I'm casting my care upon you. And I believe that you care infinitely for me.

Coping with tension, that's some prescription from the word of God as to how you are to deal with it. May God help us to work it out in our own experience. Father, we do not ask from you to be made immune to the pressures of life, but we pray that we might be able to take upon ourselves those responsibilities and those tensions which are within your will and help us to divest those which are not.

Help us to cast those before you. And should it be that we impose upon our nervous system strains that it was never designed to take, Lord, will you just lift that strain and help us to enter into the peace which our Lord Jesus spoke of. And most of all, ensure we ask of you that we are in a right relationship with you, knowing the excess tension of sins unforgiven being removed as we repent of our indiscretion and plead forgiveness because Jesus bled and died to absolve us from all our iniquity.

So send those who must go now away rejoicing. But Lord, we pray for those of us who come around this table, may we know increasingly his presence in the breaking of bread and the drinking of wine. Amen.