The Mount No.19 Dealing with Worry

The reading is from Matthew 6, 25 to 34. Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is life not more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air.

They do not sow or reap or store away in barns, yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you, by worrying, can add a single hour to his life? Why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labour or spin.

Yet I tell you, not even Solomon, in all his splendour, was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you? Are you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear? For the pagans run after all these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them. Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for each day will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. God will bless the reading of his word.

Teaching in tender tones of the flowers that grow in the field, gentle and sweet were the words he spoke of the lessons of faith they yield. Take no thought for your life, he said, nor what ye shall eat or wear. Your Heavenly Father knows your need, and makes your wants his care.

Once here, the holiness of the field, how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin. Yes, Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these. Once here, the holiness of the field, how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin.

Yes, Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these. Hearts that are saddened with anxious thought, here is comfort and healing for you. Fear not and doubt not, but trust in God, for the message of Christ is true.

Strength will come in the time of need from him who is sure and strong. Your helpless shall melt in glorious morn, your sorrows shall turn to song. Once here, the holiness of the field, how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin.

Yes, Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these. Once here, the holiness of the field, how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin. Yes, Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these.

So easy the singing, so hard the outworking. Yet the Heavenly Father tells us to be anxious for nothing. And through his Son, he picks up all the precious promises of the Old Testament concerning peace, the quietness of heart, and reaffirms them.

It's God's will that no one here should be unduly concerned. It's God's will that we should all enjoy the great benefits and blessings of the Christian faith. Let not your heart be troubled.

You believe in God? Believe also in me. The peace of God, which passes all understanding, shall garrison and keep your heart and mind through Christ Jesus. They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.

They shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint. Occasion of the 25th verse, with all his teaching that you heard something of last week, having already been stated in terms of the external matters of treasure and income and handling finance, goes on to deal with the more internal aspects of personality, about concern for ourselves and so forth.

And so he leads off with this great declaration, Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life. We'll be looking at the 25th right through to the 34th verses of this chapter. Someone has said, and they obviously were feeling a little jaundiced, that life can be summed up with three verbs.

To hurry, to worry, and to bury. Well, it's rather too uncomfortably close in accuracy for us to dismiss it out of hand. In contrast to that is the epitaph spoken at the memorial service of some grand Christian saint, and it was said of him, he went through life blithely.

That word does not mean carelessly, does not mean insensitively. It means that he went through life with poise and dignity, retaining a sense of peace and serenity. And that is of course what the Lord Jesus wants of you and me.

Lloyd-Jones tells us in one of his addresses, All must agree, he's speaking of these verses, All must agree that you will not find anywhere in any textbook a more thorough examination of worry, anxiety, and the anxious care that tends to kill a man in this world. Than you find in this short paragraph. Well, how are you on the worry scale? I have just resigned as the President of the Royal Society of Worriers.

I handed in my resignation down on the seafront this morning. I had to do so because how can you speak to other people about something that you engage in fairly regularly yourself and show them the way out. But the pulpit is not, of course, the measure from which you match yourself.

It's not me, it's the teaching of our Lord. And our Lord Jesus is very clear here. In fact, he reproduces three times the burden of his heart.

For he tells us in the 25th verse, Therefore I tell you, do not worry. And he repeats it later on in the 31st verse. So do not worry.

And just in case you're rather dull in your understanding, he comes back to the same thing in the 34th verse. Therefore do not worry. Now Jesus is setting up kingdom principles.

Remember, he's in the open air. The backdrop is this natural amphitheatre. In front of him, stretched out, is the Sea of Galilee.

And before the sea, of course, you've got these crowds of people that he will know, some of them at least personally. Maybe Mary, his mother, was there. Certainly he's in Northern Territory.

His disciples are there. If you like, in embryonic fashion, the Church is there. And because our Lord's words are always up to date, they resound down the corridors of time.

You'll pick up the echo. And he's speaking to folk at Worthing Tabernacle, who he loves as much as he loved the crowds 2,000 years ago. And he says, don't worry.

Don't worry. Don't worry. So we've got to try to deal with this subject, as our Lord feels that it's of such great importance.

And he tells us, for starters, the sort of things that people worry about, doesn't he, in the 25th verse. Do not worry about your life. Do not worry about what you will eat, or drink, or what you will wear.

Eating, drinking, wearing. That unholy trinity. If you bought a paper yesterday, and there was a supplement, go through the supplement later today or tomorrow, and tear out all the adverts that deal with eating, drinking, wearing, and you'll discover that your supplement will be incredibly thin.

Our Lord, two millennia before the modern publications ministry came about, highlights what occupies so many people. And he says that we're not to be over-concerned in worrying about these things. Our magazines will tell you what cigars you're to smoke, what underwear is to adorn you, how to clothe your body, how to cool your body, refresh your body, relax your body, titivate your body, tilitate your body, anything but master your body.

And Jesus speaks in terms of not just the mastering of the body, but the mastering of the mind. Don't worry about the pantry, the things that you eat. Don't worry about the wardrobe, the things that you wear.

Don't worry about your diary, verse 34, about tomorrow. Oh, you say, that's an easy one to duck. I don't keep a diary.

But don't be over-literalistic in interpreting our Saviour. The older you get, the more your diary becomes a problem. Not in terms of fulfilling all the obligations and all the appointments, but what is tomorrow going to bring? You see, here I am without my loved one.

He was called home. She was called home. Yes, we had kids, but they're not really quite so sensitive to our needs.

Or here I am as a single person, and a lot of my contemporaries have died. Ten years ago, I had 10,000 pounds in the bank when I retired, and it seemed to me such a large sum of money, but now it's whittled down in value to about 2,500. You see what I mean when I say that you're not to be too literalistic in interpreting our Saviour.

Don't worry about the pantry, the things on which your life depends. Don't worry about the wardrobe, what you wear, your health. Not the main thing to be concerned about, says our Lord Jesus.

Don't be over-anxious about what the future will bring. Easy to say. And almost frustratingly hard to listen to.

Because you know it. You know He's right, don't you? You know He's right as much as I knew He was right when thinking over this address some hours ago down on the seafront. But Lord, though it makes common sense and we hardly need you, we speak with respect to tellers.

How on earth do we do it? Somebody gave me a green magazine yesterday. Here is green theology coming up from our Lord Jesus as He reviews the whole area of worry. And He says, if you want some help in how to handle unnecessary anxiety, well, verse 26, look at the birds of the air.

They don't sow, or reap, or store away in barns. Verse 28, why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labour or spin.

Yet in a beauty contest, Solomon would only be a poor runner-up in terms of assessing real beauty. I was in Victoria Station on Friday watching one of these pigeons doing a sort of acrobatic flight, touching down with a finesse of concord as he spotted a piece of unwanted McDonald's hamburger. Got it, and was airborne again.

And our Lord Jesus says that the birds of the air, they can teach us, as can the lilies of the field in this whole area of overdone worry. Says Martin Luther characteristically, you see, He is making the birds our schoolmasters and teacher. It is a great and abiding disgrace to us that in the gospel, a helpless sparrow becomes a theologian.

Whenever you are listening to a nightingale, continues good old Martin, whenever you are listening to a nightingale, therefore you are listening to a great preacher. Every day God feeds and nourishes innumerable little birds out of His hands. And yet, brother Martin, you can be too lyrical because it is not just like that, is it? Our Lord is using a metaphor.

We must not push His metaphors too far. Look at the birds of the air. It is true that they don't get over-anxious about their food.

But God doesn't pop their food into their mouths, does He? He causes the birds to go into the scrub, into the undergrowth and there to find the insects and the worms and what have you. He is so much behind creation that He has got it into such a way if man would leave it alone, not pollute it, that it can actually support the animal world that He has created. And even the business about the lilies and the grasses, they are all part of a natural process, part of nature.

Nature is not static. Nature is always moving. The cycles of the seasons from winter to spring, to summer to autumn.

The sun and the rain, the process of germination. There is work there. Perhaps we don't always see it because it seems to be slow, but nonetheless it is there.

And when our Lord is making these illustrations to these people and to ourselves, He's not teasing them or us unnecessarily when He says look at the birds and look at the flowers and look at the grasses. They don't worry. He is not saying that thought in itself is wrong.

We understand the Jacobean English at the time in which it was written when take no thought is a little different in understanding than what it is in the 20th century. Thought and forethought are actually part of the bird's disposition. Some birds will migrate in the winter, not so to a warmer clime.

I wish I was a bird. Some will prepare for the winter by storing up food. There is nothing wrong about the lucky years of your life.

In fact you're a fool if you don't. There is nothing wrong in doing an honorable day's work. Paul says if you don't work you should eat.

So let's not draw wrong conclusions from what our Lord is saying, but He is making this point that there is more to life than the pantry. There is more to life than the wardrobe. There is more to life than the diary.

And so He says as He continues His teaching that the important thing is not just the body, what you will wear, or the stomach, what you will put in it, or the diary, what the future might bring. These are honorable concerns, but they are not the fundamental concern. The fundamental concern is your relationship with Him and your soul and God's interest in your eternal well-being.

Consider, says our Lord Jesus, the futility of just worrying about the pantry and the wardrobe and the diary. He tells us that there is no way in which we can actually add to our life span. Verse 27, Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to His life? It's not too clear in the original and the authorized version will give you a different interpretation here as whether our Lord is speaking about the life, the span of life that we live, or actually our height.

We can't add, let's take the authorized version, we cannot add half a yard to our height through worry, can we? I know some small people who are very concerned because they would like to be tall. I also know some tall people who are very concerned because they like to be small. Now whatever your concern is in whichever spectrum you're at or maybe you're just in the middle and it doesn't even concern you at all and you wonder what all the worry is about, you can't add to, you can't subtract from.

Now God can do this and He does, doesn't He naturally when you're born as an infant eventually 18 years goes by, 16 years goes by and you rise to full maturity but you can't through your own worrying add to, subtract from. You cannot indefinitely postpone the day of your death. In fact worry can do the opposite and bring it a little more close.

So our Lord says consider not only the birds, not only the lilies, not only the grasses but consider the futility of worry. And then He goes on and starts to be exceedingly helpful when He makes reference to little faith. Look at verse 30 If that is how God clothed the grass of the field which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire will He not much more clothe you O you of little faith? Now it seems to me that if you can crack open what is in that phrase little faith you will begin to understand how the Lord Jesus wants us to deal with over anxiety.

What is little faith? Now hear me or else you'll make wrong conclusions from what I have to say and judge me to be a heretic. Little faith has got nothing wrong with its quality. Never despise little faith.

It was a little faith that I had as a boy back in Sheffield that caused me to know salvation. It's a little faith that I've seen amongst the drug addicts in Hong Kong that has caused them to commit their lives to the Lord Jesus even though they've got little understanding of what the gospel is all about. Little faith is saving faith.

Little faith means that I believe that God in His grace sent the Lord Jesus to this earth and that He bore my sins in His body on the tree. You might not even be able to articulate it like that but at least you've got the idea that God has moved towards you and He's forgiving. That's little faith.

It's little faith that preserves you in terms of your understanding of eternity. I know I shall be safe when I step over the Jordan and into the unknown world because of what Jesus has done for me. He is the resurrection and the life.

Little faith is concerned with the ultimate but, and here's the bottom line it's not to do with the immediate. And this is the problem you see. You can have faith in the ultimate a little faith but not faith in the immediate.

Faith for tomorrow faith for yesteryear faith for eternity but Jesus is saying what about faith today? Consider the birds of the air the lilies the grasses they're not concerned about today so much the pantry the wardrobe the diary You see we really are quite crazy people aren't we? We sometimes just sit here on a Sunday morning a Sunday evening or whatever church or mission or hall that you go to and we concur with the preacher about the great truth of Christianity that God has stepped into time and space and done marvelous things for us. We trust Him for the ultimate but we forget about the immediate. You say I don't quite understand what you're saying.

Well let me take you to Paul in chapter 8 of Romans and here you will find an illustration and I could give you many this morning that would substantiate my point where the Apostle speaks about the major and then moves to the minor. In the 31st verse he has Calvary in mind and all the remarkable things that God has done in allowing His Son to die on the cross. He assesses if you like in his balances that God has so loved us and given His Son for us.

The apple of His eye the most marvelous thing that God could do for man He has done. So the Apostle says and rightly so in the 31st verse of Romans 9 What then shall we say in response to this? What is our reaction going to be? Think it through. You see the Apostle is always asking you to think.

Jesus will always ask you to think. Christianity is not per se an emotional thing. That's a secondary thing.

It's an overflow into the emotions but at first it affects your mind. Think. What shall we then say to this if God is for us who can be against us? Now the argument gets to the pinnacle in the 32nd verse.

He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all how will He not also along with Him graciously give us all things? Game, set and match. He's secured the point hasn't He? You see not just the little faith as I say you don't take that in a derogatory sense the adjective is a beautiful adjective the noun that it's qualifying is exceedingly important it's the faith in the ultimate faith in eternal security but little faith says our Lord Jesus don't start with a little faith don't just think that God concerns Himself with the ultimate this God He's concerned with the immediate with a pantry. With a wardrobe.

With a diary. You see our Lord is so practical in His teaching isn't He? The 33rd verse I'm back in Matthew 6 the 33rd verse you see He's got the priorities right in front of the people seek first His kingdom that's so necessary seek first His righteousness that is incredibly important know that you are a child of God seek these things and says our Lord all these other things the pantry the wardrobe the diary will come under the control of God as well Dr. Lloyd-Jones who teaches me so much as I recall the memory of him and probably more so because of preaching in what was his pulpit where I used to listen to him for so many years as a student I remember him once saying I don't quite remember what the address was but I remember this particular remark it's amazing how remarks of preachers stick in the mind isn't it? Years after you've heard them and he said of the Lord's prayer that actually if you can say the first two words and understand what you're saying you hardly need the rest of the Bible in other words the gospel is encased within the first two words what are the first two words of the Lord's prayer? Our Father Our Father verse 26 look at the birds of the air they do not sow or reap or store away in barns and yet your heavenly Father feeds them verse 32 for the pagans run after all these things and your heavenly Father knows that you need them let me give you a picture here's a man who loves animals I hope you all do I hope you're all responsible in your attitude to the animal world what we allow in terms of cruelty to animals in the 20th century is an offense before almighty God Spurgeon said you can tell a great deal about a man by the way that he treats his animal well here's a man and he's got a dog alright he feeds his dog he has a cat he feeds his cat he has a couple of chickens or a run of chickens whatever noun you use for a quantity of chickens I'm not sure I'm not into chickens he likes birds and so he goes out in the morning and he feeds the birds he's a family man he's got five kids what could you conclude about this man who's so concerned about the animals that if he feeds the birds his cat and his dog the likelihood is he's going to have an infinitely greater concern about his own children his own flesh and blood now says our Lord Jesus Heavenly Father he causes the birds to be fed the grasses to grow and the lilies to be adorned so beautifully if he's concerned about the minor and there's no way in which the animals can refer to God as Heavenly Father or inanimate creation can have that sort of relationship if he is faithful there will not Heavenly Father be even more faithful towards you for the ultimate in his concern as far as the pantry goes and the wardrobe goes and the diary goes you see my Christian friend I can do no more than help you as I was helping myself some while ago this morning by telling you the greatest thing that you and I have to do as believers is to think did you hear that you see one of the things that it seems to me the whole of the 20th century tries to crowd out that's why we have music wherever we are in the dentist in the aircraft bells on her fingers and ring on her toes she shall have music wherever she goes there must be noise to stop you thinking it's part of the 20th century culture that's why the beat music is so loud but Christianity says no come aside come and reason a while draw near to God and He will draw near to you our Lord Jesus says consider alright you're worried you're worried about the pantry you're worried about the wardrobe you're worried about your diary now consider consider what He's done this Heavenly Father He's been faithful to you in the ultimate He's been faithful to you in the past does that not mean He will be faithful to you in the present and in the future now don't misunderstand our Lord Jesus He's not naive in His thinking He knows that there are problems that hit Christian believing people as well as they hit the unbeliever He knows that each day has enough trouble of its own that's what He says in verse 34 so be occupied with today and don't get neurotic about tomorrow and next week and next year He's not saying that you're going to have a charmed life that you're not going to know problems in terms of material well-being or sickness or what have you but what He is saying is this that look, Heavenly Father is so concerned about you that He'll never let a circumstance come into your life that you and He cannot handle it together did you hear that? now look I've got two more minutes and I promise I'll be through by quarter to twelve the thing that I think God tells me to say to you are you listening? I don't use that language very often from this pulpit I'm talking to you as a husband without your wife I'm talking to you as a wife without your husband I'm talking to you as a Christian brother without your brothers and sisters I'm talking to you as a Christian sister without your friends just you, me and the Holy Spirit hopefully making this the Word of God to you think think of who this God is and how He loves you and has pledged Himself to you and though all other supports and props be taken from your life and I cannot guarantee that they won't though I pray that they will not you and He can make it together because His Son has said that Heavenly Father who cares about the birds and the grasses and all the rest of it has a greater concern about you not one of your tomorrows will come to you before He's inspected it now in God's name take that and think it through I'm not against fellowship after church but sometimes my friend I tell you we don't take what is received from the pulpit and work it through in our lives we're more concerned about what He said and what She said whether He was there or She was there or so on and so forth so many many things and we miss we miss the benefit of the Word of God by not taking time out and just going through what the Lord has said to us so that when you have an experience like my friend Samuel Lam in Canton and you're taken off perhaps to be on your own you can't cope but if we would work through what our Lord Jesus is teaching us on a one to one basis because He wants us to be mature in Him and through His Spirit and if necessary on our own then we have the antidote to our worries talking to yourself consider think it out be still my soul the Lord is on thy side bear patiently thy cross of grief or pain leave to thy Lord to order and provide in changing times He faithful will remain the answer to worry about the wardrobe the pantry and the diary is discovered in an appreciation of what God has done in the major and what God pledges to do in the minor God give you not just an ultimate faith but an immediate faith