Worry and Your Life
Matthew 6:19-34
“The World’s Greatest Talk” sermon series
Rev. Brian North – Westminster Presbyterian Chehalis, WA
May 30th, 2010
Today, we are continuing our sermon series called, “The World’s Greatest Talk” as we look at Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. In this morning’s passage, we again come to more well-known teachings that impact our every day lives.
I’m going to step out on a limb and guess that most of us here this morning have things in life that cause us some worry. If not right now, then we have experienced it in the past and will again in the future. This includes me. In fact, just this last week, I worried about writing this sermon on how not to worry. Just kidding…In fact, sermon writing is one of the last areas of ministry that I’m ever tempted to worry about. But worry is something that touches all of humanity. And in today’s passage Jesus tells us that when our wills are lined up with God’s will, we don’t need to worry.
As you may know, worrying can have negative effects on our health. One medical website says, “In the midst of excessive worrying, you may suffer with high anxiety — even panic — during all your waking hours. Ultra-sensitive to their environment and to the criticism of others, excessive worriers may see anything — and anyone — as a potential threat. Chronic worrying affects your daily life so much that it interferes with your appetite, lifestyle habits, relationships, sleep, and job performance. Many people who worry excessively are so anxiety-ridden that they seek relief in harmful lifestyle habits such as overeating, eating junk food, cigarette smoking, or using alcohol and drugs.”1
Clearly, too much worrying is not good for our physical health. But it’s not good for our spiritual health, either, which is Jesus’ primary concern in this teaching. So let’s dive in.
First, Jesus tells us not to store up treasures on earth, but rather treasures in heaven. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Treasures of the earth are only temporal. They don’t last. And you can’t take them with you. So what is “treasure in heaven?” Jesus doesn’t explicitly say, but based on his life and his teachings, we can gather that deeds of kindness, acts of love and mercy, the preservation of the truth of God, moral uprightness, and so forth are treasures in heaven. So Jesus is calling us to focus on the things of heaven, and not on the things of earth.
Then, in verses 22 and 23, to make another point, he makes an analogy between the eyes and a lamp, saying the eye is like the lamp of the body, letting light come into the body. The confusing part about these two verses is that: A lamp shines light out, but an eye lets light in. And so I seriously never fully made the connection here until this week: What does Jesus mean that an eye is like a lamp? Are we to be like Superman, shining lasers out of our eyes? It’s just strange. But what he’s getting at, and we see this in the rest of verse 22 and into 23…what he’s getting at is that the eye is like the glass of a lamp.
Good glass on a lamp lets the light through without distorting or coloring it, so you can see well. Poor glass is smudged or dirty or cracked, and when the glass of a lamp is in that kind of condition, the light coming through gets altered; it’s not in its pure form anymore. So just as a good lamp lets the light shine rightly, so good eyes let in the good light rightly. So our eyes don’t shine light out, but let light in. Probably most of you had this figured out a long time ago. I’m a little slow. Perhaps in the 21st Century, it helps to think of the metaphor with a camera lens instead of a lamp. So if the eyes are unhealthy, they change the light, it’s darker than it could be, and so forth. It’s a metaphor for allowing God’s light, the light of Christ, to shine into our lives – and not through dirty glass, but through clean glass so God’s light comes into our lives undistorted and in it’s purest form. This allows us to live rightly, like storing treasure in the right place, just as a lamp allows us to move rightly around a room.
In verse 24 Jesus makes the point that you can’t serve two masters, and specifically points to people’s efforts to serve God and wealth. Now in our day, this loses some of it’s power. The closest thing most of us will ever have to a “master” here on earth is our employer. Or if you have or had kids in the home and things got turned upside down, maybe you’ve felt like you were a slave to your children. But in the case of a job, it’s perfectly possible to work for one boss at one job, and another boss at another job. People do it all the time. Sometimes more than two jobs even. But if a person in their day became a slave to someone, it wasn’t a part-time gig or even full-time 40 hours a week. It was 24/7. You literally could not serve one master, and also serve another. You simply did not have the time to do that.
So that’s the context. And the point is that we can’t serve God as our master and serve wealth – or anything else for that matter. If God is our master and has command of our time, our talent, our wealth…if our treasures are stored with him rather than on earth…if we let his light completely and uninhibitedly into our lives…It is impossible to serve something else as well. What’s the point of these three related teachings? Jesus sums it up in verse 25, when he says, “Therefore” – which means “in light of what I just said to you” – “Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.”
Birds don’t worry about that stuff. Flowers don’t worry. And oh, by the way, you can’t add an hour to your life by worrying, so what’s the point? So how do we do it? By following the advice on where best to store our treasure, what lights our lives, and who our master is. When we keep our focus on God, and not on earthly stuff such as our wealth, our possessions, and so forth…then those things simply don’t matter as much. Jesus is saying that all that really matters is our relationship with God. So, if there’s anything worth worrying about, it’s our relationship with God…but Jesus doesn’t want us to do that either, so don’t worry at all.
Now, it does beg the question, “This is nice, but it’s hard to do.” I agree. Kind of like the teachings Jesus gave earlier on anger, forgiveness, adultery, divorce, our “Yes’s” and “No’s”, loving our enemies, and how to pray. Nothing Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount is easy, and it’s true about not worrying, too.
So, what do we do? I mean should we just throw in the towel and call it quits? Absolutely not. There’s a two-fold point to his teaching here. First of all, his teaching is to lead us, nurture us, guide us, and even push us if necessary toward a relationship of trust with God our Father. Secondly, as we trust in God, he teaches this so that we’ll work to live as God calls us to.
Let’s start with the second one first, and use the example he gives of the birds. Jesus holds them up as the model example of how not to worry about your life. So let’s look more closely at that. Do you know what birds do from the moment the sun barely begins to light up the morning sky to the time it gets dark at night? If you have any birds that have made nests anywhere near your bedroom window you know exactly what they do: They work! They work hard! I know they do, because I hear them every morning at 4:30 a.m. when I’m trying to sleep. They don’t know what it means to sleep in. That is not a part of bird culture. What is a part of their culture is to work. Wake up, go to work for 18 hours, looking for food, feeding, fixing the next, and then go to bed. Then repeat. No weekend. No Sabbath. No vacation. No chaise lounges by the side of a pool. They work! And it’s not because they have a stockpile of stuff that they’re building, it’s because when they wake up in the morning, they have nothing to eat! They have to go get it. That’s the model Jesus highlights for how not to worry. And actually, with flowers, it’s the same thing, though they don’t make nearly as much noise. The roots are growing, the flower opens up to the sun, it follows the sun around during the day, it absorbs water, photosynthesis is happening, and so forth…they’re working, even if it’s not as obvious as it is with birds.
This model should really come as no surprise. We were created to work, right from the beginning. Genesis 2:15 says, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it.” God put him to work! Jesus is bringing us back to that place. And when our treasure is in heaven, when his light is what lights our path, and when God is our only master we’re serving, we can be confident that the work we’re doing is the work he wants us to do. So worry is decreased. We’re doing what he wants, our priorities are right, God’s will is being carried out, He’s in control, not us, and so our level of worry goes down. This brings us to the other reason Jesus teaches this: To draw us close to God.
Remember, that’s where he started all this: treasure in heaven, the eyes, one master, and so forth. There’s a singular focus on God there. And he comes back to this at the end. Rather than worrying about all this other stuff, he calls us to trust in God. In verse 32 and 33, he says, “For it is the Gentiles [people who don’t love God] who strive after all these things (stuff of the world); and your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But strive first [there’s that idea of work, again] for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” There’s work, but there’s also grace – all these things will be given to you as well. God’s grace reigns supreme. God knows we need clothes and food, and so forth. And with his grace enveloping us and all of life, and as we work inside of God’s grace, the Lord will provide.
The final question becomes, then, “Do we trust God to provide?” Do you and I believe that God is good, and that God will in fact take care of us? Clearly, Jesus doesn’t mean we can lay around all day and do nothing and try to abuse the grace of God – the birds and flowers illustration show us that. God works hand in hand with us. But none-the-less, God is above it all and over it all and in it all, and ultimately is our provider. And so do we trust Him? If we trust him, there’s no need to worry. It’s like a child who trusts their parent to care for them and provide for them. They trust. There’s still work for them to do – chores, homework, and so forth – but the parents are over it all in a relationship of trust.
One way we show trust is simply in worship. Coming to a worship service at church is a step of trust. Especially when you don’t know what the service is going to be like, such as this morning as we go to one service for the summer. But we come, and we trust that God will meet us here. We trust that God will speak to us through the sermon or a song or a prayer or somehow else. We trust that we won’t fall asleep in the middle of it all. We trust it will be a worshipful experience and glorify God. For a person who hasn’t been to church ever, or in a long time, there’s an even larger sense of trust: that the service won’t embarrass them in some way, that they won’t be publicly identified as visitors, that they won’t be made to do anything against their wills, that they won’t sit when everyone is standing or stand when everyone is sitting. “Trust” in worship is huge.
And so Jesus is calling us to trust God in all facets of life. Because when we worry, we are demonstrating a lack of trust in God. When we tell our friends, “I’m so worried about…” whatever it is, we’re not being salt and light in the world. When we think that in our minds and feel it in our hearts, we’re telling God, “I don’t trust you.” And God wants us to trust him. God wants you and me to trust him for the forgiveness of our sins; trust him for our tomorrows, trust him for today; trust him in our work, our families, our friendships; To trust him in all of life, and to trust no other. Because the one who gave you life and created everything seen and unseen is trustworthy in all facets of life.
I want to give one final illustration to tie together all of these teachings, and then wrap this up. Let’s say a person has a decision to make. It could be any kind of decision, but I’m going to pick a big one to make it clear, though I believe this is true about the little decisions in life, too. Let’s say a family is in the market to buy a house. Mom and dad know their family’s needs, and they knows what they can afford. But as they shop for the house, they becomes tempted to buy the larger house with more bells and whistles that also costs more. And, they end up buying that home. Soon, it becomes clear that the mortgage is stretching the finances too thin. Food can’t be sacrificed…clothes are needed…the car needs repair. So what happens? They start to worry. Shortcuts are taken where they can be, such as in giving to God, and in so-called optional spending such as vacations, kids programs, date nights for the husband and wife, and so forth. As a result, relationships are strained, stress mounts, and guess what? They start to worry. And we say, “They should trust God to provide!” True. But what they should have done at the start was live out Jesus’ first teaching: Keep their treasure in the right place, let the light in clearly so they make wise decisions, and serve just one master, letting God guide them in their decision making.
You see, trusting God begins at the beginning of our decisions, not just at the end. And if you want to know God at the end of your life, He invites us to begin trusting him now. There’s no time like the present to deepen, or begin, our trust in God. In the home buying case, it’s trusting that the home they knew would be enough really would be enough. When we have our priorities right, trusting God becomes a way of life, not just a last-minute effort when things are really tough. God wants us to trust him all the time so our worries would be put to rest.
So: As you go about the work of life, do you do so in a relationship of trust with God? Jesus is calling us here to a life of trust, in all facets of life – those we can’t control and those we can. And If you want to really live fully and completely, Jesus invites you to put your trust in Him, when he says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” If you want to live worry-free, there’s no time like the present to start trusting God more, and today is the day you can begin to live more trusting in the one who knows all your yesterdays, as well as all your tomorrows. Let’s trust him more. Pray…
1 http://www.webmd.com/balance/how-worrying-affects-your-body