Matthew 6:25-34
Last week we began this section of the Sermon on the Mount in which Jesus questions anxiety. His repeated statement “Do not worry” is an encouragement and a comfort; it is not an assignment that we have to find the ability to accomplish or even a command that we have to summon up the will to follow. “Do not worry” is not a stand-alone statement that should ever be spoken to someone in the midst of a battle with anxiety. It is not even the first sentence of a conversation; “Do not worry” is a conclusion. In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus says that our Father is in the secret place waiting for us to join Him in prayer, that He gives grace to all making the rain fall on the just and the unjust, that we can love our enemies because our Father has loved us when we were His enemies. He has taught us to pray for our daily bread, meaning everything essential for life, and to ask for forgiveness. I know we studied this at length but I want to make sure we realize how significant that it is. A bit later in the Sermon on the Mount Jesus will remind us that our Father in heaven gives good gifts and that He can be trusted, His character is such that He would never tell us to pray for something that He was not already willing and prepared to give. “Do not worry” is not where we start it is where we rest. Once again, R.T. Kendall wrote “The purpose of this section of the Sermon on the Mount is to set us free from worry.”
Anxiety asks questions we can’t answer and attempts to diminish the truth that we are confident in. There are two main things that anxiety attacks, God’s character toward us and our value to God. Last week we studied Jesus’ question “Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?” We found, in verse 26 the three most important words in our battle with anxiety, “your heavenly Father.” Ultimately life is far more than what I have or don’t have, more than what I understand and don’t understand, more than I fear and what I hope for; life is extraordinary, it is immense, it is beautiful, it is so far beyond my imagination or even my capacity for understanding, but life, above all else is a reflection of its Creator. I believe that Jesus’ point with His first question is to get us to see that knowing the author of life is far more important than understanding all of the details that can be found in life. Anxiety wants to turn our attention away from the author and so it asks questions we can’t possibly answer hoping for one thing, that we will question what we have already known. Hebrews 3:14 says “For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end.” The gospel begins with one truth, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son”; the confidence of God’s love for us is what draws us to repentance, what pierces our hearts and what leads us to surrender our hearts to His desire that we would not perish but would have everlasting life. Anxiety attacks that love in two ways, one is to question God’s character the other is to diminish our worth. Today, in an effort to loosen the hold of anxieties questions we are going to consider what God has said about us and done for us. We are going to see that our value to God is actually found in His character and that God’s goodness toward us is not defined by what we understand, by what we have or by what we do not have but by a relationship of love that we have not earned by our actions and cannot lose by our weakness. The question that Jesus asks today to reveal the deceitfulness of anxiety is “Are you not of more value than the birds of the air?”