"Your Heavenly Father Know Your Needs" (Matt. 6:25-34)

Transcript

Well, let's remain standing as we read God's word tonight. Our sermon text comes From Matthew, chapter 25 or 6, verses 25 through 34. Matthew 6, verse 25 through 34. And if you're using a pew Bible, this is on page 965. 965.

Here now, the word of the Lord From Matthew, chapter 6, verses 25 through 34. Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

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 clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin.

Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 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 clothe you, O you of little faith? 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. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. This is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God. Please be seated. And as you're taking your seats, let's join our hearts together tonight in prayer. Gracious Father, we thank you that you are Almighty God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and that you relate to us not as some distant deity, but as our Father, the one who draws close, the One who calls us by his children. And Father, we pray that tonight, as we hear your word, you would indeed bless your people.

We pray that you would give us hearts to understand, eyes to see and ears to hear, all that is contained in the good news of the gospel of your son, Jesus Christ, particularly, that we might cast our cares and anxieties upon him, knowing that he cares for us. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.

We live in an anxious age. There are a lot of reasons for this, but there are two that come to mind as I think about the anxiety that pervades our culture. The first thing is that while every age has had its own reasons for anxiety and fear and worries and cares, we are uniquely connected through technology to the anxieties of the entire world. Obviously you can see footage of what's happening over in Iran, but to potentially give a less concerning but still potentially anxiety provoking idea, Maybe some of you saw the video of the cars that fell through the street in Omaha, not too far from my previous church. Maybe you were not even worried that your car might suddenly be swallowed up by the street.

And that's something new to worry about this week. We're just connected to all of these things and all of them can just fill our mind with all kinds of anxieties. But another one is that we think about anxiety. We talk about anxiety. Even scholars research anxiety all the time.

It's just constantly in our midst. So it's constantly brought back to the forefront of our attention. A while ago I saw an ad on Facebook for special anxiety treatment beds for dogs and cats. And I clicked on the link because I was curious and it said that there was a Harvard study that said that three fourths pets experience quote, character affecting anxiety on a daily basis. Even our pets are anxious and we are anxious about the anxiety of our pets.

And on and on it goes, round and round and round. So what do we do about all of this? Well, the proposed solutions are endless. Maybe there are anxiety reducing beds for your pets and that will take care of something. This morning I offered some solutions.

I urged us From Acts chapter 12 to pray with patience, meditating on the promises of God in his word. But there are other solutions as well. Maybe thinking about healthy things like exercise, maybe unplugging a digital fast for a time period to get away from the constant news and incessant things of worries that can flood your feed and your phone and your television. Maybe there's medication or maybe there's self medication through drugs, alcohol, partying. Well, in this passage, Jesus tells us his own answer to the problem of anxiety.

He says, do not be anxious by trusting God to provide all of your needs. That's our theme for tonight. Do not be anxious by trusting God to provide all your needs. The answer is so simple in some ways, but that doesn't mean that it's easy. It's a simple answer.

But boy, this is something that we wrestle with, that we struggle with. And so we need to give special attention to the words of our Lord tonight. And so three parts to our sermon tonight as we think particularly of the Heidelberg catechism question that we read question number 26 for Lord's Day 9. First of all, trust God your creator. Trust God your creator.

Second, trust God your provider. Trust God your provider. And third, trust God your faithful father.

So we'll start with first, trusting God your creator. In verses 25, 30, Jesus starts in verse 25 with the word therefore. And again, you know this Bible principle whenever you see therefore, you have to ask, what's it there for? And that typically reminds us that we're supposed to look up the page at the previous passage. In the previous passage, Jesus had instructed us to lay up our treasures not on earth, but in heaven, to stop treasuring what is earthly and to start treasuring what is heavenly.

And as we think about the way that these two passages go together, we might ask, how do you know what it is that you are treasuring? How do you know where your treasures are? And one of the answers to that question is to just ask yourself a simple diagnostic question. What gives me anxiety? What provokes my fear about what I might lose or what might be harmed or what might be affected?

If I don't care about something and I lose it, okay, I guess I'll move on with my life. But when something is really wrapped deeply around my heart, and this can be good things, like the family members that God has given to us, our friends, our loved ones, our church. Or this can be not so good things, like maybe things that we love a little bit too much. When any of those things are affected or threatened, we can start to feel anxiety rising in our hearts as we start to worry about those things. Now what Jesus starts to say is that we should not be anxious.

And maybe it would make sense to us if we said that we shouldn't be anxious about things we don't need to be anxious about. Maybe you don't need to worry so much about the character affecting anxiety of your dog or your cat. But he goes to really important things. He talks about basic survival of life things. He says, don't worry.

Don't be anxious about your life. And the word here is soul. Don't be anxious about what it is that constitutes the entirety of what you are as a human being. And so he says, don't worry what you're going to eat. Don't be anxious about what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on.

Is life not more than food and the body, more than clothing? But the question maybe you're asking yourself is, but how can I be free from anxiety when I have been seriously hurt in the past by something that feels very similar to what I am facing right now. Or how can I be free from anxiety when my life, my health, my living that feeds my family is potentially in some kind of serious danger? How can I stop anxiety when I cannot fall asleep at night, or when I wake up in the middle of the night and those fears are just swirling around my mind? I can't just say, stop it.

It doesn't work. You just lie there longer, staring at your ceiling. How can I be free from anxiety when a loved one is wandering away from Christ and towards sinful destruction? And the answer that Jesus is giving here is reminding us that God is our Creator and he's going to appeal to the creation, to the grass of the field and the birds of the air. God is the Creator of heaven and earth and everything that fills it.

But he is also the One who created us and our needs and therefore knows how to meet those needs as our loving, faithful Father. Again, our catechism question, the first paragraph said, well, you know, how can we. What do we mean when we declare that God is our Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth? And the first part of that answer is this, that the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, in other words, this is the same one who out of nothing, created heaven and earth and everything in them, who, again same God, still upholds and rules them by his eternal counsel and providence, is my God and Father, for the sake of Christ his Son. Now, this whole passage is dealing with this issue of fatherhood, although we don't read about God as our Father until a little bit later in verse 26 and then again, particularly in verse 32.

But Jesus is teaching us to relate to God as our Father. But to do so, the first thing he does is to remind us that God is the Creator. He appeals to creation through for evidence that if God still continues to care for creation, especially lower life forms in creation, it will certainly provide for our needs. And so first, in verse 26, he urges us to look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them.

Are you not of more value than they? Now, don't misunderstand. Birds are actually always busy. They are never idle. If you watch a bird, it's just constantly going around, pecking for food, going here and there.

You know, sometimes they might sing, or sometimes they might. Maybe sometimes you've seen the birds squabble with other birds in the air. But really the entirety of Their lives, they're searching for food. And yet Jesus is reminding us that there is no crumb, there is no seed. There is nothing that a bird eats that is not provided by God.

There's a wonderful phrase in Psalm 104, that these all look to you to feed them in due season. That's what we read tonight. That's what our officer reading was reading from us tonight. And the birds are the same way. And so Jesus says, are you not of more value than these birds?

And then in verse 27, and which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to your life, to a span of life? Earthly anxieties cannot add to our lives, to our earthly lives. In fact, they can only take our life away. And yet that doesn't make it easy to just set those anxieties aside. We need Jesus speaking to us, confronting our anxiety and fear and little faith.

And so Jesus continues doing that. In verse 28, he says, and why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these.

Now, a couple of things to note in this section. The word consider is really interesting. It is a word that is very closely related to the word in Greek for disciple. Now, the word for disciple is related. The word for learn or to learn, or the learner.

And this idea for consider is learn accordingly. Might be a really rough translation. Learn accordingly. Consider these things, study them, and learn from what you see. Learn accordingly to what you are seeing happen in front of you.

And he points us to the lilies of the field. Now, a moment ago, I talked about how birds have everything that is fed to them that comes from the hand of God. And yet they are always busy. They are never idle. Lilies are the opposite.

They are constantly idle. Yes, they let their roots grow down to soak up nutrients from the soil. And they let their flowers and their petals and their leaves point toward the heaven to soak up sunlight from the heaven. But they don't move. They don't reach for these things.

They don't feed themselves. God is literally to passive creation things, feeding them, providing for what they need, and particularly clothing them in splendor and beauty. And if they were created with more glory than even Solomon wore with all of his splendor, how much more Jesus says, will God clothe you?

Now, here is where in verse 30, where he pokes at us a little bit in a way that we need. But if God So clothes, the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven. These are not very valuable items in God's creation. Will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So Jesus is reminding us that God will certainly clothe us if he cares for lesser creatures.

But then he calls the reason that we are suffering, the reason that we are struggling as little faith. We are anxious because we are not trusting God to provide for our needs. Now, one of the interesting things I think to tease out, I've given this some thought in my life and it's been helpful, is that what Jesus is urging us to do here is the opposite of our impulses, our instincts. Our impulses are that we want to tackle our anxieties directly. When we have a problem, we want to rush to that problem and fix it.

And maybe if we don't know how to fix it, or maybe we're frightened to go toward the problem, we're still dealing with it directly, but just in our heads. We're sort of turning it about in our minds. We're looking at it from all angles. We're trying to find that solution. Maybe we're rehearsing conversations that we have had or that we want to have.

You ever had that hypothetical conversation with someone a thousand times, and you never actually had the conversation to clear the air. It just becomes this constant source of anxiety as you play out all the ways that that conversation can go wrong. We've all been. We've all spent nights turning those conversations over in our heads. We.

We want to deal with things directly. But Jesus says that's why you're anxious. That's why you're so filled with worries, because you're looking at your own strength, your own skill to have these conversations. You're trying to figure out how you can deal with your problems. You can't deal with your problems directly.

You have to, what Jesus is saying, deal with these things indirectly. You got to take your eyes off of the problem and look to the One who will solve your problems. You have to look to the Lord. You have to look to his power and his grace and his love toward you, his children, as our Father who is in heaven. And the more that we look to the Lord, the more that we see his power and his compassion toward us, the smaller our problem seems in the light of his grace and glory.

And so this leads us, as we think about this indirect dealing with our anxieties, to the second section, where we are called to trust God, your provider, trust God, your Provider, practically speaking, how do we put this into place? Well, in verse 31, Jesus is really coming close on his application. He says, therefore do not be anxious saying what shall we eat? Or what shall we drink? Or what shall we wear?

And then in verse 32 he gives an explanation. He says, for now, just like you need to know what therefore is for, this is a different word, this word for, for. The word for is again giving. I've talked about this before, but it's giving an explanation for what you just read. And probably if you've read 31 and you're someone who suffers from anxiety, you realize that maybe that's not the most helpful thing that fixes your problems for you as you read it.

Jesus says, don't be anxious. Okay, well how is that supposed to happen? Well, the answer to that, the explanation from that, the filling out of what Jesus just said, that does make sense, does show the relevance of what Jesus said in verse 31 is in verse 32. And Jesus really gives two four statements. One is not translated by the ESV as a four.

We'll come to that in a moment. But the first four statement that gives us explanation is four. The Gentiles seek after all these things. Now Jesus is appealing to and pointing to the logic of paganism. The logic of paganism is summarized that you can get what you want if you offer the right sacrifice to the right God at the right time.

Now you get what you want. Not because those gods care for you, they don't. But you can manipulate them, you can appease them, you can do the right thing that they want. You can scratch their back, metaphorically speaking, so that they will scratch yours in return. It's a give and take kind of a thing.

If you do enough in the right way at the right time for the right God, your problems can be solved. This is why in paganism magic was very common. This is why the Lord forbids worshipping idolatrous God. And he forbids any kind of fortune telling or any kind of magic or any kind of sorcery. Because all of those are attempts to manipulate nature by again doing the right sacrifice at the right time to the right God.

God is not like that. God provides for you because he loves you. It doesn't all fall on your shoulders. You should not be like the Gentiles who seek after all these things. The next part of this verse then gives us a second for statement.

The ESV translates this and but the word there is for once again, for your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all Again, your certainty, your confidence, your comfort in life is not in maintaining a rigorous schedule of sacrificing the right sacrifice to the right God at the right time. It's not by doing a number of good deeds so that hopefully God will see what you are doing and will accept you and be pleased with you and reward you for your good behavior. It comes from the undeserved, unmerited, free grace love of your Father in heaven. And we can rest in this knowledge. We can rest in the fact that our Heavenly Father has loved us, is loving us, and will continue to love us even though we don't deserve it, even though we have done nothing to earn it from Him.

And if he is our Father, why wouldn't our Father, who knows our needs, provide for us? The second paragraph of Heidelberg Catechism number 26 reminds us. It says, I trust God so much that I do not doubt he will provide whatever I need for body and soul and will turn to my good whatever adversity he sends upon me in this vale of tears. Veil means like a valley of tears. It's a line from Psalm 44, the valley of Baca, the valley of tears.

And in this veil of tears, in this life where we are surrounded by the shadow of death, we need a Father who will watch us through it and will provide what we need. Well, the appeal that Jesus has made to God's power as Creator and the implication that Jesus draws from this, you don't need to be anxious, you don't need to worry about this. Because the Father who loves you is the same Father who is the Almighty God who created heaven and earth. This is so powerful and comforting if we think about it, because we need to consider, that is, think accordingly to what God's power in creation might teach us about trusting in Him. I want you to think about what we learn about God in creation.

The same God who created all things out of nothing is still able to provide for you what you lack and stand in need of today. The same God who created light by the word of his power is able to answer any questions that still keep you in the dark. The same God who created the expanse of the heaven has sent his own son, Jesus Christ, into this world to forgive you of your sins, the sins that would keep you from heaven. The same God who created the dry land is able to move the most true, treacherous mountain in your life today by faith. The same God who created the vegetables and the fruit trees is able to feed you and your family today and into the future.

The same God who created the heavenly bodies in the heavens is able to keep the sun from striking you by day and the moon by night. The same God who created the fish of the sea is able to fill up your boat with those fish when you have spent all night fishing and have come up empty. The same God who created the birds of the heavens is able to renew your strength so that you mount up with wings like eagles, running and not becoming weary, walking and not growing faint. The same God who created the beasts of the earth still owns the cattle on a thousand hills and is able from his riches to supply all your needs in Christ Jesus. And the same God who recognized that the man was not in a good situation when he was alone and created a woman as a fit helper still knows that it is not good for you to be alone, and he is able to provide you with every needful relationship in this life.

God is able to do all that. God is the Creator, who is also your loving, providing Father.

But even if he's able, how do we know that he's willing? Do we know that he will show up even the night before like Peter this morning? Heidelberg Catechism 26, third paragraph, says, he is able to do this because he is Almighty God. He desires to do this because he is a faithful Father. Let's look at this third section now.

Trust God, your faithful Father. What Jesus says in verse 33 is counterintuitive because it is indirect. When we know what we need, we want to go for what we need and get what we need and use that thing that we have gotten to supply our needs. But what Jesus says is that shouldn't be the first thing that you do. Trying to meet your needs should not be the first thing that you do.

Instead, seek first something different. Seek first something that indirectly seems to be moving you away from the solution to your problems. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Don't miss the repetition of all from verse 32. Go look at that again.

For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. It's in seeking first your Heavenly Father's kingdom that these two parts of our relationship to God come into place. It's in recognizing that he is the King, he is the Sovereign, he is Almighty God. We are called to submit to him first and to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness.

But right Beside that, we see that in doing so we have a promise that he will meet our needs, seek him first, and he will do for us what we need done.

Jesus closes with a final encouragement in verse 34. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient is the day, or for the day is its own trouble. I read again. Anxiety is well studied.

I read a recent study. It says that 85% of the things that we worry about never come to pass. To me, that number sounds low. If I think of all of the things that I worry about, 85% seems low. They seem real.

They seem like this terrible, horrible nightmare will certainly come to pass, but they don't usually.

It's really interesting what Jesus is saying here. Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. And he's promising that there will be grace for today. And I want you to think about the comfort that that promise offers, that there will be grace for today, that God will provide what we need for today. He doesn't make promises about tomorrow.

He makes promises for today. But what happens when the clock hits midnight? What happens when the calendar turns? What happens when tomorrow arrives? It's not tomorrow anymore.

It's today. And what promise do we have for today that God will meet our needs today? Tomorrow, with all of its fears and uncertainties and the nightmares that we're certain going to happen tomorrow never comes. Instead, every day we have today, and so long as it is called today, we can be confident that the Lord is still Almighty God, the Creator of heaven and earth, and he's still our faithful Father.

Well, how do we apply this tonight?

Well, I want us to just step back and consider a great irony. Jesus is speaking to a group of people for whom food was not a constant guarantee in the way that it is for us. Clothing. Maybe you had one set of clothing. If you were rich, maybe you had more than one.

But most people just had one that they wore all the time. We live in an age of unprecedented wealth, and yet it's in the midst of that unprecedented wealth that we suffer unprecedented anxiety. It's almost. And this is where it gets really perverse if we think about it. Because God has been so faithful to meet all of our basic needs.

The food that we eat, the Word, the water that we drink, the clothing that we wear. Because he has met all of those needs, we turn around and become anxious about our wants. We become anxious about everything else. It's like there's a vacuum to fill. Well, goodness, we have everything we Need.

So I gotta look around for some things to be anxious about. This is our heart. This is where we find ourselves. This is why we still need to listen to Jesus confronting us and saying, do not be anxious about these things. Consider your Father in heaven.

Consider the way he clothes the lilies of the fields and feeds the birds of the air. Consider your own life. Consider how much he has fed you and clothed you. But maybe we struggle with this because we know actual situations where needs have not been met, at least as we think so. God did not heal so and so's cancer.

God did not keep these other people over here from persecution. God did not stop this family from falling apart. And on and on and on. We talked about that today. It says all of those things arise that we are called to be patient in prayer and wrestle with the Lord, not knowing what may come.

What are those things to you? Jesus says, you follow me. You trust me. Jesus is lifting our eyes away from the anxieties of this earth to our Father who is in heaven. Because ultimately our hope is not in what God may or may not do in our earthly lives, but in what God will provide for us for all of eternity.

Because if our faith is rising and falling based on our circumstances in this life, no one could ever survive. All of us must eventually die. And so if that's the only thing that we're checking is, boy, keep me from death and keep me from all pain, well, then we can't survive our faith. But on the other hand, when we stop looking at our circumstances and we begin to treasure Christ and His kingdom, we can relate to this world appropriately. We can enjoy earthly treasures without laying up or treasuring those things as ultimate.

We can work diligently, like birds, to meet the needs of our lives, but not do so in an anxious way. We can endure even the worst nightmares knowing that Christ's kingdom is unshakeable. Again, I've shared this before, but when we can shift to thinking, what if, what if, what if to think even if, even if, even if, and be reminded of our faithful Father's care for us, our life becomes very different.

But what if you're here tonight and you don't know Christ? If you don't know Jesus, then I understand why your life is a flood of anxieties. Because if you don't know Jesus, who is protecting you in this life and then the next, even if you can somehow work your way through this life, it's like a game of Frogger, you know, when you're just kind of Just trying to dodge one car after another in life. Even if you can somehow work your way through what is going to happen, how will you be protected when you enter into the life to come, when you pass through the veil of death and enter into eternity? The good news of the gospel is you don't have to continue life as a ball of anxiety.

Christ died. The same Jesus who says, do not be anxious went through great anxiety for you. So anxious, we are told, that his body began perspiring blood because he knew the hell that he would have to suffer at the cross for you, so that you would not have to suffer the same fate. You don't have to be anxious. Christ has already suffered under the wrath of God.

You don't have to fear. Christ has already accomplished the most important things that you need. He died to atone for your sins. He rose from the dead to defeat death. He destroyed your greatest threats and the greatest vulnerabilities for all those who trust Him.

Him. O sinner, would tonight you turn from your pride and your anxiety and look to Christ in faith and Christian. Would you entrust your anxieties freshly tonight to your faithful Savior, Jesus Christ, the One who watches over you, body and soul, the one who not even a hair can fall from your head without his knowledge? Would you sing with the psalmist? God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear. Though the earth gives way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling. Would you take your eyes off of earthly anxieties and set them on the things above, where your Savior is seated, at the right hand of God. Where is your treasure? Well, follow that anxiety.

Then turn from those anxieties to Christ. God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, is your Father in Jesus Christ, and He is able to provide whatever you need today because he is Almighty God and he desires to provide for your needs because he is a faithful Father. Pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that you would lead us to trust Christ. And as we trust Christ to look to you, our Father in heaven, whom Jesus Christ has reconciled us to, that we might be confident and that we might stand in faith whatever we face today.

We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.