“Don’t Be Anxious”
Matthew 6:24-34
5/25/08
Worry... The dictionary defines it as
“to give way to anxiety or unease; to allow one's mind to dwell
on difficulty or troubles.” It’s one of the first
things I did in writing this sermon. It might be one of the first
things you do when you get up in the morning. It’s a sin
that we all commit at one time or another. And for someone to
tell us to stop worrying, why, he might as well tell us to stop
sinning. And yet, in today’s Gospel text Jesus tells us not
to be anxious: “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.” His telling you not to be
anxious, however, is not the same as just anyone telling you not to be
anxious. These are the words of your Savior, the One who died for
your sins on the cross and did everything necessary to reconcile you to
God. With His words Jesus actually takes your worry away.
He doesn’t do this by directing you to look inside yourself for
the strength needed to stop worrying. He knows you’re too
weak to help yourself. Instead, He begins by directing your
attention to birds and lilies for the lessons they can teach you about
worrying. Then He tells you to seek first the kingdom of God and
His righteousness, and everything that you worry about will then be
taken care of by your heavenly Father.
And so, we must listen to who it is who’s
speaking to us. He is not only the One through whom and for whom
all things exist, but He is the One who loved us to the end, giving His
life on the cross to save ours. Through Jesus, our Creator has
already taken care of our greatest need, the need for redemption.
And as the Apostle Paul writes, “He who did not spare His own Son
but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously
give us all things?” It is to those who belong to Him,
then, to those who have been purchased with the blood of His Son, Jesus
Christ that the Lord says, “Don’t be anxious.”
These words are not for unbelievers. They have every reason to be
anxious. For them the future holds judgment and eternal
punishment under God’s wrath. But for the children of God,
those born of water and the Spirit, they have the privilege of asking
their heavenly Father to give them their daily bread with the assurance
that He hears them and will provide for them every need of both body
and soul. We Christians do not need to worry about
anything. Because we are still sinners, however, we struggle with
worry all the time. But the Lord grants us His grace, not only in
forgiving us this sin along with all the others we commit, but also by
focusing our attention elsewhere, so that we might not give in to the
temptation to worry the next time it comes along.
The first things He draws our attention to are the
birds of the air and the lilies of the field. Because they are
creatures of our heavenly Father, both made and preserved by Him, they
can teach us creatures of God, whom He has made in His image and
redeemed with the blood of His Son, something about His loving care
towards us. Using birds and lilies, Jesus shows how our heavenly
Father takes care of the two most basic temporal needs we have in this
life, that of food and clothing. Pointing to the birds Jesus
says, “They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet
your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than
they?” Here Jesus addresses our worries about food.
If God provides food for these little creatures of His, which
aren’t made in His image and which haven’t been redeemed
with the blood of Christ, will He not also provide food for you, His
children? The answer is yes, He will. You don’t have
to worry. God will provide for you. You are of much more
value to Him than birds by virtue of the fact that you have been bought
with the blood of Christ. Your heavenly Father will give you each
day your daily bread.
Pointing to the lilies, Jesus then addresses our
worries about clothing. He says, “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?” Here again, if God
cares enough to provide for these short-lived little creations of His,
how much more will He provide for you, who are worth His Son to
Him? Even if your life is relatively short, you don’t have
to worry about clothing any more than you need to worry about
food. Your heavenly Father will give you each day your daily
bread. And when you die, it won’t be like the death of the
lilies. In Jesus you have been saved from the oven of the fire of
God’s wrath. You will go to be with Him in heaven.
Now, some might get the wrong idea here and conclude
that since God will provide for all our needs, that means we
don’t have to work. We can just sit back and wait for God
to drop manna from heaven. After all, Jesus says here that birds
don’t sow, reap, or gather into barns, and that lilies neither
toil nor spin. We don’t have to work. All we have to
do is pray that God give us this day our daily bread, and
“Poof!” it’ll just appear.
But Jesus is not telling us here that we don’t
need to work. He says, “Don’t worry,” not
“Don’t work.” In fact, even the birds and the
lilies work. It’s what they don’t do that He draws
our attention to. Birds may not sow, reap, or gather into barns
(like people do), but they do work to feed both themselves and their
young; they even build nests. And lilies may not toil or spin
(like people do), but among other things they do work to pump the water
and nutrients from the soil up through their roots into the rest of the
plant. So, these creatures do work; they just don’t try to
do what they are unable to do or what’s not given them to
do. We beset ourselves with more worries when we try to take on
things that we are unable to do, or when we try to do things that have
not been given us to do. Instead, we should just do the work that
God has given us to do. The birds and the lilies simply do the
work God has given them to do and leave everything else up to Him; we
should do the same. God provides our needs through work - our own
work as well as the work of others. Work is a gift to us from
God. It may be difficult at times, but we don’t need to
worry, neither do we need to toil. To toil is to wear yourself
out with your work. You’re to work, but you’re not to
kill yourself in your work. That’s just another form of
worry. Just do what the Lord has given you to do with His help,
and leave the rest to Him. He will provide you your daily bread.
After using the birds of the air and the lilies of
the field to teach us that we don’t need to worry, Jesus then
tells us what we are really to be seeking after - God’s kingdom
and His righteousness. When we seek these things first, all other
things (food, clothing, our daily bread) will be added to us.
When we worry, we are preoccupied with the wrong things.
We’re not focused on God’s kingdom and His
righteousness. We’re not keeping our eyes on the things
that are above and are eternal, but on the things that are below and
are temporal and passing away. It’s like an Olympic runner,
who, instead of keeping his eyes focused on winning the race and
receiving the prize, lets himself get distracted, whether by the pain,
or by the thought of running all that way, or by the obstacles he has
to get through to finish, or by the people along the way who might try
to discourage him. We Christians are in a race, the race of
faith, and worry is one of the greatest distractions in this
race. It threatens to get our eyes off of the prize, the goal,
and end of the race, and instead it gets our eyes on our
problems. So, Jesus gets our eyes focused back on what they
should be focused on, the things that are most important in this
race: the kingdom of God and His righteousness.
So, what is this kingdom of God and His
righteousness that we’re to be seeking? Our Lord teaches us
to pray, “Thy kingdom come.” Luther explains what
this means in the Small Catechism when he writes that the kingdom of
God comes “when our Father in heaven gives us His Holy Spirit so
that by His grace we believe His holy Word and lead a godly life, here
in time and hereafter in eternity.” In Matthew the kingdom
of God refers to God’s act of reclaiming and restoring His fallen
creation through the reign of Jesus. Jesus began setting up this
reign as He forgave sins, as He cast out demons, as He healed people of
their sicknesses, raised the dead, atoned for our sins on the cross,
and overcame the grave by His bodily resurrection from the dead.
The kingdom of God, then, came at Christ’s first coming, when He
inaugurated His kingdom through His life, death, and
resurrection. On the Last Day, the kingdom of God will come in
its fullness, when Jesus comes to raise the dead, to judge the devil
and the wicked, and to save the righteous, ushering them into the new
creation.
In the meantime, the kingdom of God comes now
through the proclamation of the Word about Jesus and the administration
of the Sacraments. And this is where we are to seek
God’s kingdom today. It is the place where God is
furthering His reign in Christ. It is the same place we are to
seek God’s righteousness. God’s righteousness in
Matthew refers to His salvation. Achieved as it was through Jesus
on the cross, God now delivers that salvation to us through His Word
and His Sacraments - Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, Holy
Absolution. To seek God’s righteousness, then, is to go to
these places where God is giving out that righteousness, where He is
giving out the salvation that Jesus won for us on the cross, a
salvation which includes not only the forgiveness of sins in this life,
but the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting in heaven
with the Lord. Our worries, no matter how large they seem, will
then pale when stacked up against the kingdom of God and His
righteousness.
So, you don’t need to worry for two
reasons: First, you have God’s promise here that when you
seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, everything else that you
need will be added to you. When you are first of all on the
receiving end of the gifts that God gives you through His Word and
Sacraments, you will then also be on the receiving end of the gifts
that God gives to sustain you in this life. When you have Jesus,
you have everything. And Jesus has taught us to pray to our
Father, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Will He
not answer us, His children, whom He’s purchased with the blood
of His Son? Secondly, Jesus tells you that worrying will not add
a single hour to the span of your life. Worrying doesn’t
help you; in fact, it will probably take away from the length of your
life. Not only will it affect your physical life, but it will
also affect your life in Christ, as worry is a sign of unbelief.
In effect it says to God, “I don’t believe you care enough
about me to provide for me; I don’t believe that you will keep
your promises to take care of me.” Such a person has little
faith. We all need to confess that we are often people of little
faith, but then receive the Lord’s forgiveness and hand our
worries over to Him.
We have no need to worry, because our heavenly
Father will give us what we need when we need it. He even knows
what we need before we ask Him. But let us not go the opposite
way and say that we have earned or somehow deserve the gifts that He
gives us. Neither the birds nor the lilies teach us that.
They teach us that we are nothing but given to by the Lord, nothing but
on the receiving end of His undeserved gifts, which He gives to us
apart from any merit or worthiness in us. He who has given you
eternal life and redeemed you with the blood of His Son will not fail
to give you everything else that you need for this life.
“Cast your cares upon Him,” then, as the Apostle Peter
writes, “for He cares for you.” Amen.