Text: Matthew 6:25-34
In May of 1995 Randy Reid, a 34 year old construction worker was welding on the top of a nearly completed water tower just outside of Chicago. According to Chicago Tribune writer, Melissa Ramsdell , Reid unhooked his safety gear for just a moment to reach for some pipes at the same time a metal cage lower down shifted and struck the scaffolding on which Reid stood. The scaffolding buckled and Reid plummeted 110 feet to the ground below where he ended up face down in a pile of dirt, narrowly having missed a pile of rocks and debris.
A fellow worker called 911, and when the paramedics arrived, they saw that not only was Reid still alive, but in spite of his pain, his sense of humor was still in tact. As the paramedics bent to pick up the stretcher they had placed Reid in, he quipped, “Make sure you guys have a good grip on this thing. I’d hate for you to drop me.” The doctors who later examined Reid said that he was fine except for some bruising on his lungs, and some very colourful exterior bruising.
We may not realize it but we are a lot like Randy Reid! “How you say?” Many times God has protected you from the monumental. That accident that almost happened, the disaster that could have happened to you! God comes to us this morning at Rosebank to say, “Hey, don’t sweat it – I’m still on the throne and I still have control.”
Recently Richard and Carol travelled to Argentina and I don’t know how many of you know this but Richard has a real fear of flying! Actually Carol is just a little nervous of being at 40,000 feet too, so before they left they upped their insurance policy for accidental death to a cool one million. Just a precaution you understand. The night they before they left they were really beginning to get nervous so to take their mind off what might happen they went out for Chinese Food. When the fortune cookies finally came, Richard’s said, “A recent investment you have just made will pay off big for those you love.”
Richard called me, hyperventilating a little and I said, “Richard there is no sense worrying, …. Everyone has a time to die and worrying about it won’t help.” He said, “I’m not concerned about it being my time to die or even Carols. What worries me is, - what if it’s the pilot’s time to die?”
Jackie and I were over at Richard and Carol’s to see the pictures after they arrived home and I asked him about the flight and how it went. He said they hit a fair amount of turbulence as they were flying over the Caribbean. Carol piped up and said, “Yeh, and Richard was so nervous he called a stewardess over and asked her point blank, “Mamm, I don’t mean to sound nervous, but how often do planes like this one crash?” She looked him right in the eye and said, “It’s the same every time – they only crash once!” Richard was not comforted! The fact is we all worry about something, sometime. Now to be truthful, the former account of Richard and Carol’s trip was fiction as it relates to fear, but many people do worry about the “What if’s in life.”
Worry is essentially a control issue. Let me define worry for you:
Worry is trying to control the uncontrollable. We can’t control our health so we worry about our health. We can’t control the amount of rain we get so we worry about our crops. We can’t control the economy, so we worry about the economy. We can’t control our children, so we worry about our children. We can’t control the future, so we worry about the future. The truth is, worry never solves anything. All it does is make us miserable. It’s stewing without doing. We all ought to be either cooks or guitar players because we sure know how to stew and fret.
You can’t change the past, but you can ruin a perfectly good present by worrying about the future.
The root English word for “worry” literally means “to choke or strangle”. That’s what happens when you worry. You choke off the life. You strangle the joy out of your life, every time you worry. The Greek word in the Bible literally means a divided mind. It’s this tug of war that’s going on in your mind.
Today we’re looking at “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living.” In Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount, He has a lot to say about worry. He talks about the reasons for worry. He talks about the reasons we don’t need to worry. And He talks about how to stop worrying.
FOUR REASONS WHY WE HAVE NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT!
1. WORRY IS UNREASONABLE
Matthew 6:25 “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and your body more important than clothes?” He’s saying that worry is irrational, unreasonable.
In the first place, we often worry about the wrong things. Jesus says it doesn’t make sense. It’s useless. You’re worrying about what you’re going to drink, what you’re going to eat, what you’re going to wear. He said that’s the wrong thing. Those are small, trivial, not very meaningful.
I was at a church dinner at one of the former churches we attended and a guy from Keswick, ON, spilled some stuff on his new tie and he nearly had a coronary. He was so worried about it. I was thinking, “Man! Get the kind of ties I wear! I’ve got five stains on this one and you can’t even tell.”
Jesus is saying, if you’re going to worry about something, make it matter. Don’t worry about the external, worry about the eternal. Don’t worry about what you’re going to drink, what you’re going to wear and stuff like that. If it’s not going to last, don’t worry about it. To worry about something you can change is stupid. To worry about something you can’t change is useless. Either way it’s unreasonable to worry.
Have you noticed when you worry the thing gets bigger in your mind? Somebody criticizes you, you start worrying about it. If you worry about something long enough, pretty soon you think the whole world is against you. By the next time you go to a football game and you see the team huddle, you are certain they are all there to talk about you!!! It gets exaggerated. Worry is unreasonable. The person is free from worry regarding anything they say, if that person’s everything is truly placed in the hands of the Lord.
2. WORRY IS UNNATURAL
Jesus gives us an illustration from nature. Matthew 6:26 “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. Are you not much more valuable that they are.” God says you’re more valuable that the birds. Then He says in the next verse, “Why do you worry about clothes. Look at the fields of lilies. They don’t worry about theirs. Yet King Solomon in all his glory was not clothed as beautifully as they are.”
Jesus again gives us a couple of illustrations from nature. First He says, look at bird watching. I’m not an ornithologist but from my point of view as an amateur, if anybody’s on God’s welfare role is the birds. What do they do? They chirp, they tweet and they twitter and they fly around and take up land that could be developed! Say, did you hear about the wild canary that flew threw the venting fan on the side of a barn, “SHREDDED TWEET!” The birds of the air, ….what do they really do? Yet God says to us, “I take care of them and aren’t you more valuable that they are?”
Then He says, look at the flowers. Have you ever looked closely at a flower? It’s not even going to last 6-8 weeks, yet look at the intricate design, the attention that God gives to flowers. He says, they’re not even going to last and yet look how much attention God has paid to them in designing them.
Here’s the point: animals don’t worry, flowers don’t worry. There’s only one thing in all of God’s creation that worries – human beings. People. We are the only thing that God has created that doesn’t trust God. We’re the only thing that worries. And God says this is unnatural. Worry comes out of human interference with the divine plan. Before the fall and all the effects of the curse, “Adam could have said like his Australian progeny, Mick Dundee, “No worries Mate, No worries!” Worry is like a rocking chair; it will give you something to do, but it won’t get you anywhere.
Psalm 145:16 “God satisfies the desires of every living thing.” All of creation trusts God except mankind. Worry is not natural. I know you’ve said, “I’m a born worrier.” No, you’re not. Worry is a learned response. You learned it from your parents. You learned it from peers, from brothers and sisters. You picked it up. You may have a natural inclination but you’re not a born worrier. It’s something you learned. In fact, you have to practice to get good at it. Some of you are very good at it because you’ve had a lot of practice at worrying. The good news is, since it’s learned it can be unlearned. He says it’s not natural.
Worry is unhealthy. Your body wasn’t geared to handle worry. God didn’t wire you up to handle worry. So when you worry, you take it out on your body. You have stomach problems, you have muscle problems, back problems, digestive problems. It causes all kinds of ailments and illnesses and health issues when you worry because your body was not designed to handle worry. Have you heard somebody say, “I’m worried sick.” They may be. Dr. Charles Mayo of the famous Mayo clinic has said, “I have never seen a man die from hard work, but I’ve seen many a man die from too much worry.” Dr. William C. Alvarez, who heads the department at the Mayo Clinic that deals with digestive disorders and stomach problems says that in his opinion, 80% of all stomach disorders are not organic, but functional. Wrong mental and spiritual attitudes throw functional disorders into the digestive and nervous systems. You’ve likely heard the colloquialism, “It’s not what you’re eating, it’s what’s eating you. I read this week that in the United States of America people consume 165 tons of aspirin or related headache medication per day. Seven and a half billion headaches a year. That’s a lot of Tylenol and Excedrin! Why? Because worry is not only unnatural, it’s unhealthy.
3. WORRY IS UNHELPFUL
It doesn’t work. It doesn’t change anything. It’s useless. Matthew 6:27 “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” He says, Why are you worrying? Worrying cannot make you taller. It cannot make you shorter. Worrying cannot make you thinner as much as you’d like it to. It can’t make you bigger. It can’t make you smarter. Worry cannot make you live longer, add even an hour to your life. In fact, what it does is the opposite. It shortens your life. Studies have shown that people who are chronic worriers actually live less long than those who don’t worry. People who have peace of mind tend to live longer. He’s saying this doesn’t work. When you worry about a problem it doesn’t bring you one inch closer to the solution. No progress at all – stewing without doing. It doesn’t work because worry does not change anything.
Worry does not change the past. As much as you’d like it, it can’t change the past no matter how much you worry about it. Worry cannot control the future, no matter how much you worry about it. So if it can’t change the past and can’t control the future, what does it do? It messes up today. That’s all it does. Every time you worry, all you’re doing is robbing yourself of happiness right now.
Worry does do one thing. It makes you miserable. It changes you—from a happy person into a miserable person. Proverbs 12:25 “Worry weighs us down.” Worry causes more fatigue than work. People worry more than they work. It does tear you down, wear you down. Contrast that with Proverbs 14:30 “A heart at peace gives life to the body.” So you’re either going to be up or you’re going to be down with your worry and that’s going to affect your body. But it doesn’t do anything. And it’s certainly unreasonable, unnatural and unhelpful.
Then finally Jesus says
4. WORRY IS UNNECESSARY
Matthew 6:30 “If God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won’t He more surely care for you, O you of little faith.” He says it’s unnecessary. If you know God, you don’t need to worry. Why? Because God has promised to take care of your needs if you just trust Him. He will take care of your needs and you don’t have to worry. He’s the Father.
As a child, when I had a need, financial or otherwise, I’d go to my dad and say, “Dad, here’s what I need. I need money for this or that.” In all my years growing up, I never once worried about where my dad was going to get the money. Not once. It’s a dad-kid kind of thing. Kids ask, dads provide. I never worried at all. I just figured he’ll know where to get it, he’ll know how to get it, it’s going to be there. That’s his job.
Your Heavenly Father has promised to meet all your needs if you put your trust in Him. You don’t have to worry about where God’s going to come up with it. If you come to Christ and say, “Jesus Christ, I want You to be number one in my life. I want to live for You. I want to follow Your plan, then God assumes responsibility for all the needs in your life. In Philippians 4:19 “God shall supply all your needs in Christ Jesus.” It says all your needs. Not some, not a few, not the ones He wants to pick out, not the spiritual ones. It says all your needs. Does that include bills? Yes. Does that include dealing with relational conflicts? Yes. Does that include your dreams and your goals and your ambitions? Yes. Does that include the health issues you don’t know what to do with? Yes. All means all. God will meet all your needs in Christ.
The real issue is, Is God a liar? That’s the issue. Do you trust God? Is God a liar? He says, I will meet all your needs.
It doesn’t say, all your greeds. There’s a big difference. God has not promised to give you everything you want. He’s not going to do that. He hasn’t said He’d subsidize your selfishness. He says, “I will meet all your needs.” If He’s promised that, that includes everything.
The bottom line is that worry is always a misunderstanding of what God is like. Anytime you start worrying all kinds of alarm bells ought to go off in your mind, warning, flashing lights that say, “Something’s off here. I’ve forgotten who God is. I’ve forgotten there is a God. I’ve forgotten what He’s like. I’ve forgotten He’s with me all the time,” and I just start focusing on myself. Worry is always a misunderstanding of what God is like. God is not some angry judge, sitting up in heaven waiting to make your life miserable. He’s a loving father who’s deeply interested in all the intimate details of your life, He knows everything about them and He wants to help you. He wants you to have a relationship of love, trust and obedience. So He says, “Come to Me with your problems.” God is a loving father who cares about your needs.
If I don’t know God and if I don’t know what He’s like, then obviously I’m not going to trust Him. And if I don’t trust God, the bottom line is I’m going to live a life of worry. I’m either going to trust God or I’m going to live a life of worry.
Many people say, “I trust Jesus Christ for my salvation, but I still worry.” How illogical is that? Think about it!! You say you can trust enough for God to get you out of hell and into heaven, but I can’t trust God to take care of my bills. If you are here today and you are born again listen carefully to me. When God saved you, He solved your biggest problem. Everything else is small potatoes, peanuts, compared to that one. You were forgiven, washed clean, promised a future in heaven, given a purpose for living. Everything else is minor by comparison. So what are you worried about? If He’s going to help you with the most important, biggest problem in your life, why isn’t He going to help you with everything else. If God loves us enough to send Christ to die for us, don’t you think He loves us enough to take care of all those other needs? It would be like if you were hitchhiking Calgary and halfway out across the prairies some car comes along. You’ve got a big backpack on and you’re getting tired and thirsty. They stop and say, Would you like a ride? You say, “Thank you!” You get in. Another hour or two down the road the driver looks over and sees that you’re still carrying the big backpack on your back. He says, “Why don’t you toss that thing in the back?” You say, “No, that’s ok. You just carry me. I’ll carry my own load. It’s enough for you just to carry me, I’ll carry all the rest.”
Some of you here today are doing that with God. “All You have to do is get me into heaven. I’ll take care of all my bills and pressures and problems and stresses and loneliness and the difficulties I have with health and family.” God says, “How stupid!” Worry is unnecessary. It’s unreasonable. It’s unnatural. It’s unhelpful.
How do I stop worrying and start really living? Jesus tells us. He gives us four things that we need to do in this passage on the Sermon on the Mount. The antidote is not just telling yourself you shouldn’t worry. That doesn’t work. Should-ing yourself just doesn’t work. “I shouldn’t worry. I should be more at peace. I should I should” That just makes you more miserable. It takes more than willpower to stop worrying and you already know that because you’ve tried. You’ve thought, “I shouldn’t worry about this,” and you just keep on worrying about it. It takes more than willpower to stop worrying.
It takes four things:
1. Get to know God
This is foundational. This is the bottom, the foundation. Matthew 6:32, the first part of the verse, Jesus says (Message paraphrase) “People who don’t know God and the way He works worry over these things.” If you don’t know God, if you don’t have a relationship with Christ, you ought to worry. You have every reason to worry. If you don’t know God and you don’t know Jesus Christ, you’re on your own. You’re out there in that big bad world, living on your own power, living on your own strength. If it’s to be, it’s up to me. You don’t have any outside external hope or power or source for all the problems and pressures you’re going to face your entire life. You ought to be worried.
Honestly, if I were trying to live my life without God’s help, I would be very worried. There’s plenty in the world to be worried about. Just pick up a newspaper. There’s plenty of things in this world to be worried about. But I don’t have to worry about them. Because I know God. You’ve got to get to know God. If you don’t know Him, you have every reason to worry. But Christians are different. We have a heavenly Father who has promised to care for us. God says, “You’re My children. Why are you acting like orphans?” Children get special privileges. They get taken care of by their parents. It’s the parents’ responsibility to care for the children. God says, “You’re my children. Why are you acting like an orphan?”
Worry is practical atheism. Every time you worry, you’re acting like an unbeliever. You’re acting like there is no God every time you worry. You’re acting like it all depends on you. What you’re saying is, “I don’t really believe God will meet all my needs. I don’t really believe God will take care of me. I don’t really believe that God’s made all these promises and He’s going to keep them. In fact, I don’t even know that there is a God.” You’re acting like an unbeliever. You’re acting like an atheist. When you worry, you may as well just be an unbeliever. You’re saying, “It all depends on me. I’ve got to take matters into my own hands. I’ve got to figure it out all by myself.” That’s called playing God. And it’s a bad example and it’s a poor testimony and you need to get to know God better. The reason you worry is that you don’t really know God. You may have committed your life to Christ but you don’t know Him so intimately or you forget it and you go back and start worrying again and again. You need to get to know God better.
John 14:1 Jesus said, “Don’t be worried or upset. Believe in God and believe also in Me.” That’s the starting point. Believe in God and believe in Christ. For many people this is not easy to do. Fears come in and doubts come in and scepticism comes in. Our background and the things we’ve learned and the things that critics have said to us and sometimes, if you’re an intelligent person, you just have this tug of war going on in your mind about “Should I believe or should I not believe?”
#2 GIVE GOD FIRST PLACE IN THE EVERYDAY LIVING OF LIFE
Matthew 6:33
“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”
One of the very most exciting times in our life together happened shortly after Jackie and I were married. We moved to Pickering and got involved in a ministry there where we were totally dependant upon God for all our support. We had days where we literally did not know where the next meal would come from.
FOOD, FREEZER, MONEY FOR CONFERENCE> God responds to our faith in His ability to live up to his Word. How many of our genuine needs has he promised to meet? ___________
Worry is unbelief, parading in disguise.
It’s ironic about money, whether you’ve got it or not, you’re still going to worry about it. Worry about getting it, worry about keeping it, worrying about losing it. Whether you’ve got it or not. Stop living for things and start living for God.
3. LIVE ONE DAY AT A TIME.
Matthew 6:34 “So don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will have its own worries. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” Jesus is saying don’t open your umbrella until it starts to rain. There’s two days you should never worry about – yesterday and tomorrow. Have you ever thought about the fact that today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday?
Why should I live one day at a time? A couple of reasons. If you’re worrying about tomorrow, you can’t enjoy today. You can’t stop and smell the roses, you miss today’s blessings. It’s ok to plan for tomorrow. In fact, Jesus said you ought to plan for tomorrow. But you can’t live in tomorrow. You can only live in today. You can either worry about tomorrow by saying “WHAT IF? or you can plan for tomorrow by saying, “I’m trusting God for…..”
On top of that, when you’re always worried about tomorrow, the future gets overwhelming. You don’t know all the problems you’re going to have the rest of your life fortunately. You’re going to have them but God has allowed the future to come at you in bite size pieces, 24-hour segments called days. Jesus says live one day at a time. Like the hourglass, the sand only goes through that centre part one grain at a time, you don’t have to face all the problems of the future today, you don’t need all the power today. He’ll give you the grace and strength when you get there. You only need enough power for today. “Give us this day our ___________ daily bread,” not weekly, monthly, or yearly bread. God, give me the strength I need today. I don’t need tomorrow’s strength because I’m not in tomorrow yet. Live one day at a time.
Jesus says trust God to care for all my needs. He says trust because the root of worry is the lack of faith. That’s why in verse 30 He says “O you of little faith.” Worry and trust cannot fit in the same heart together. When you have trust in your heart, worry can’t get in. When you invite worry into your heart, trust goes out the back door. And worry will stay in your heart and your mind until you invite faith back in the front door. You invite faith in the front door and worry goes out the back door. You can’t have them both.
4. TRUST GOD TO CARE
1 Peter 5:7 “Give all your worries and cares to God, for He cares about what will happen to you.”NIV KJV= “Cast all your cares upon him for He careth for you.” literally means , to let them go, to release them, to drop them and turn them lose. Unload them on God. How do you do that? How do you give all your worries and fears to God? In just a moment I’m going to open up an opportunity for you to come to the altar this morning and join me in giving your situations to the Lord. In releasing your concerns and the things that make you worry to Him.
One ways you deal with your fears is to memorize all the promises in the Bible. There are over 7000 of these promises and they’re there for you to claim. Seven thousand. Memorize every one them! If you do one a week you’re going to have at least 50 more at the end of next year than you do right now. This is like an insurance policy for believers. When the girl asked me at the AVIS counter in Phoenix last week if I wanted the full insurance package on the car I rented, I said yes, because I knew that even if I got a scratch or dint in the car then, it was 100% covered because that comprehensive policy says so. I didn’t worry all week long about that. (Hold up the bible - ARE YOU FAMILIAR WITH YOUR POLICY?)
The reason you’re worrying is that you don’t know what’s covered in life. You haven’t read the policy. You haven’t looked at the promises. You haven’t seen the things that God has already assumed responsibility for so you think you’re responsible for them. You need to get to know God and you need to get to know God’s word so you don’t have to worry any more.
The second thing you need to do is pray. Pray instead of worry. Every time you have a crisis you have two options: pray or panic. Those are the options. Saint Paul says this in Philippians 4:6 “Don’t worry about anything, instead pray about everything. Tell God your needs. If you do this you will experience God’s peace which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand.” If you prayed as much as you worried, you’d have a lot less to worry about. And if it’s not worth praying about, it’s not worth worrying about either. Pray instead of panic.
What’s the result? Incredible peace of mind. “You will experience God’s peace which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand.”
What’s got you worried this morning? What are you worried about? Whatever it is, give it to God. Give it to Him today. Don’t walk out of here with a worry in your heart or your mind. Those things that are beyond your control are not beyond God’s control. If you just give them to Him.
Prayer:
He can heal your worries if you’ll give them to Him. Why don’t you pray this prayer? “Dear Father in Heaven, I admit that I often forget that You are with me. I often forget what You’re like. Would You please forgive me for that? I need to get to know You better. I need to get to know Your word better, Your promises. I want to believe in God and I want to believe in You, Jesus. Help me to put You first in every area of my life. Help me to live one day at a time, not worry about tomorrow but to focus on what You’re doing right now. I want to trust You to take care of every one of my needs – financial, relational, physical, social, spiritual, mental – every need in my life You’ve promised. Help me to trust in You more and worry less. In Jesus’ name, I pray. Amen.”