Pastor
Steve Geiger Trinity
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Matthew 6:25-34
25 “Therefore I tell you, 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 the body more important than clothes?
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
than they? 27 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?
28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how
the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that
not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that
is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is
thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or
‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your
heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his
righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore
do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has
enough trouble of its own.
Calmate Matthew
6:25-34
1.
Worry seeks earthly things
2.
Trust seeks heavenly things
I
think there were five of us. Five guys
in a massive market in Oaxaca, Mexico.
It
wouldn’t be long and we were going to dance.
Dance. It was part of a Spanish
immersion program. We learned the
language, and as we also were learning the culture, we were learning the steps
to some native Indian dances. We needed
costumes.
The
costumes for our dance were not complicated.
Off-white thin cloth pants. The
same color thin cloth shirts. An older
man had a booth selling both. The only problem
was my size.
I
can’t remember if my height was the problem.
Something was the problem. I
can’t recall if I thought he didn’t understand something. I can’t recall if I thought that maybe I
should go on to another booth. What I
remember is trying to say something in Spanish that reflected a mind that was a
little concerned that maybe we weren’t going to find here what I needed.
I
don’t remember exactly what I said. I
remember exactly what the older Mexican salesman said. “Calmate.”
You
may not know Spanish. You can probably
understand the Spanish just spoken.
“Calmate.” Be calm. Don’t worry. Relax.
You
may never have shopped at a clothing booth in a bustling Mexican market. There may have been a day when you felt all
frustrated, or unsettled, or worried inside. Maybe you felt out of
control. Maybe you felt
overwhelmed. Maybe you feel
afraid. You’re thinking about the future,
whether you will ever get the dance outfit you need—or something like that—and
your heart inside is nervous.
Are
you worried about something? Concerned
about something physical?
Hear
God say to you, “Calmate.” Don’t worry.
What
is worry? Worry is being anxious, or
unsettled, about life. Worry is, no
doubt, a temptation for many of us.
Worry keeps us awake at night.
Worry makes it hard to focus on what we need to do at the moment. Worry—being afraid when we think about the
future—is a sin. Sin that is dangerous.
Dangerous
because of what worry is really saying.
Worry
assumes that you are in charge. Imagine
this. You have studied hard for a big
test. You’ve done the best that you are
able. The next morning you’ll go to
school to take the test. You’re
terrified. You wonder whether you’ll be
able to remember. You wonder what will
happen if you get a bad grade. You
imagine everything bad that might happen and wonder how you can ever avoid
those horrible endings.
You
missed one thing. How do you know
you’ll be alive tomorrow?
Isn’t
that interesting? When we worry about
the future, we assume we’ll be alive.
So often, worry overlooks the big things. Jesus says, “Is not life more important than food?” Literally, “Your life is more than
food.” There’s more to your life than
whether you’ll do well on a test the next day.
There’s more to life than whether your friend will like you again or
whether that pain in your body will go away.
What
more is there to life? Your heartbeat,
for one. When we worry, don’t we
completely overlook some of the most basic things that must keep going for us
even to have a tomorrow? We overlook
the fact that just for us to breathe another breath, someone has miraculously
stepped into our life and given us a gift.
When we worry, we overlook the fact that there is a God who this moment
is doing wonders for us.
Worry
is forgetting about God. Worry is
trusting in myself. James says a
similar thing: “Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this
or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will
happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little
while and then vanishes. Instead,
you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”
As it is, you boast and
brag. All such boasting is evil (James 4:13-16).
Worry
is connected to such boasting. Worry is
saying, “I have only one outcome that I will accept. Because I know reality might be different, I’m afraid. I’m not willing to accept whatever God’s
will is.”
Yes,
worry lifts myself higher than God. How
foolish. If I’m short and I’m worried
about ever being taller, worrying cannot add a single to my height. It’s powerless. We are powerless. Yet by
worrying we imagine ourselves higher than God.
Like we actually can do something to solve our biggest problems.
We
see ourselves as too much. We see God
as too little. When we worry, we
completely miss just how powerful and loving God is. “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the
field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was
dressed like one of these.” And if he
dresses the grass, which lives one day and dies the next, won’t he clothe you,
O you of little faith?
There’s
a little thought inside of each of us, maybe even right now, that is saying,
“But . . . but we’re different than the grass.
We have to work. We won’t have
clothes unless we work. Aha. See, I do have reason to worry. My future does depend in some way on
me. It doesn’t depend completely on
God. God’s comparison about the grass
doesn’t answer all the questions.
But
it does. Isn’t it interesting how
quickly human flesh assumes that it has power to control? I must have power, we think. Look, I must find work. God tells me to work. We assume that because we have greater
responsibility to act, we must have greater capacity to control. That because God tells us to work but not
the grass to work, we must then have within ourselves greater power to make
nice clothes come our way than the grass does.
My
friends, being given responsibility to act—to work—in no way implies that you
have control over whether you’ll get money to buy clothes. Listen to Moses as he speaks to God’s people
before they enter the Promised Land: “You may say to yourself, “My power and the
strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the LORD your God, for it
is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:17-18).
When
God says that he clothes the grass and we say that we’re different from grass
because grass just gets its pretty clothes free from God while we have to work,
and therefore while the grass can trust in God for its clothes, we must trust
ourselves and then, of course, worry because we see our own powerlessness even
in keeping a job . . . when we disagree with God and suggest that he isn’t as
“totally in control” with us as he is with the lilies, then we forget that we
have not even a heartbeat or a brain pulse or a calculation of how to dial a
phone number to seek a place of employment without God.
Yet
we imagine that though we obviously depend on God for my heart pumping, my
lungs breathing, my brain functioning, my eyes working, my muscles moving, my
skin having new cells replace with regularity those that die . . . we imagine
that somehow it’s our own power that must step to the plate to pass a test or
get a job or get my friend back or solve a relationship challenge or make the
fields dry so we can plant or find a way to get new clothes . . .
O
you of little faith.
To
the grass God gives glory greater than Solomon. Won’t the God who gives you the mystery of life do the small
thing of clothing you?
That’s
what we worry about. Things that
compared to being alive or not are so tiny.
That’s why God says we have tiny faith.
We don’t even trust he can do the tiny things. My friends, that’s the attitude of an unbeliever.
An
unbeliever thinks that life depends on him.
An unbeliever does not acknowledge with love and respect that only by
the power of God does his heart even beat.
An unbeliever thinks only about getting earthly blessings and feels that
he is the one who is powerful to make them happen. An unbeliever boasts.
When things don’t go so well, an unbeliever has every reason to be
terrified, full of worries.
Have
we been tempted to look at life like one who has no expectation of eternal
life? Like one who has no Father who
has loved in a most incredible way? So
ashamed. We have not trusted, though
not once have we seen evidence of unfaithfulness. So rebellious.
Yet
today what do we hear? The Lord
speaking to his children, children who have come to know and rejoice in the
fact that they have a Savior who died for all their doubts. Children.
You might feel that you do not deserve to be considered a child of
God. Who can call God your Father. We don’t deserve it. We surely do not have in our power the
ability to have made it happen. Would
God treat us fairly, he would give those who have doubted his love and worried
not a single additional chance.
What
we see is so different. God seeing
humans so tempted to depend on themselves.
Pride. He comes and
rebukes. There is real danger. But when our world crashes around us, when
we see how helpless we truly are, when we understand how we have made ourselves
the controller, the God, in our life and are afraid of the one who is really
God, that God opens his arms and invites us to see that he is gracious,
compassionate, slow to anger, full of love, longing not to treat us as our sins
deserve, a love possible because he already treated Jesus as our sins
deserved. “I know you didn’t trust
me. I forgive you. You are welcome back. Welcome to marvel at how you can trust
me. Always. For everything. For the
big things, for forgiveness. For the
not-so-big but still big things, for a heartbeat and brain function. And surely for the little things, like food
and clothes and friends and a future that is just right for you.
My
job, God says. I take care of my
children. I do. The birds.
The grass. Surely my children.
Your
job? Seek first my kingdom.
But
wait. I’ve got to have a job, I’ve got
to be healthy. The physical stuff. Only if I can stay alive will spiritual
things do me any good. With God’s help
such a thought now to us seems foolish.
Without God not even my heart will beat. If God tells me to seek first his kingdom, to let there be no
higher priority than the hearing of his word, to let there be nothing more
important than learning his will and then living his will . . . if the God on
whom I depend even for my heartbeat tells me to seek first his kingdom and he
will give me whatever I need, may my proud, lying flesh be silent.
Flesh,
you can’t even breathe without God’s blessing.
Don’t you dare say that God’s promise to take care of physical things,
God’s command to seek first eternal things . . . don’t you dare suggest that
you know better than God. You depend on
God.
Know
that you can follow God. You don’t need
to have as your purpose in life the seeking of earthly things . . . and the
worry that comes when you realize how powerless you are to get them. You’re free. Trust in such a powerful and loving heavenly Father seeks
heavenly things, storing up eternal treasure that will never pass away.
I
know. To follow such a plan may be to
have a life completely different from the one that so naturally comes our
way. It may mean that when your day is
crazy, you still commit to a devotion.
It may mean that when you have too much responsibility, you think first
about how you can show love to others.
It may mean that when something earthly is going terribly wrong, there’s
still a smile on your face because you know God is working mysteriously and
lovingly behind the scenes to make this challenge turn for your good.
Yes,
to seek first God’s kingdom does mean that suddenly our joy is not tied to
physical blessing or want. Our joy and purpose is tied to Jesus, to our
God. Our life is our Lord’s.
There is no better, no truer life . . .than the one that trusts a Father who says, “Calmate. There’s no need for worry.” Amen.