Overcoming Worry in an Anxious World

Audio Transcript

As I always do, let me ask you please to take your Bibles and turn to Matthew chapter 6.

Matthew chapter 6. We’ll be today in a place I didn’t expect to be today, but we’ll be in verses 25–34.

I was going to include these verses in the sermon last Sunday, but I had to finish that sermon a bit early. And I actually just had maybe six or eight minutes left in my normal time, and there are 10 verses at the end of chapter 6 here that I skipped. But I had really only planned to spend just a few minutes on these 10 verses because they’re very familiar verses to most of us, maybe to all of us, and I didn’t think we needed to go deep on them. I’ve done that at times before as we’ve been going through the Old Testament for many years and now in the New Testament. You know, there’s a lot of places in the Old Testament where I would say to you, “Here’s what this chapter is about. It lists 15 kings and their sons. And I encourage you to go home and dive into that on your own time if you’d like to.” Now, some of those chapters we did dive into and we spent time on. But so this section here at the end, I had just planned last week to kind of cover quickly and move on to chapter 7 today.

But boy, I was convicted about that all day on Monday, because the Holy Spirit kept reminding me that these are verses I really wrestle with. I have a long history of failure with these verses. So although we’ve lightly covered sections of the Bible before—I had to actually ask myself, “Did I subconsciously plan to not dig into these because they’re uncomfortable?” Now, look, if you’ve been here at all, I’ve covered some tough verses in the Bible, so we don’t skip those by any means. But it just really made me think, “Phil, you rascal. Did you subconsciously plan to just say, ‘Hey, here’s these last 10 verses. Go check them out. They’re really good’? And then I don’t have to stand up here and embarrass myself and tell you how I’ve failed in these verses.” So, I felt really impressed to pause, to change the schedule, to take the entire sermon today to cover these last 10 verses in Matthew chapter 6.

And maybe by letting you know how challenging these are for me, some of you who wrestle with them too might be encouraged. My guess is in a room this size, if one person struggles with these verses, there might be some others who do as well. I think the laws of probability would support that. I won’t ask you to stand and give your name and address if you do struggle with these, but I’m guessing that there are people who do.

I wonder if you had a dollar for every time you had worried about something, how rich would you be? I believe I could retire in luxury.

Have you worried about anything this past year, this past month, past 24 hours? Are you worried about anything right now? I’m not going to teach three hours, so you can cross that off your worry list.

It’s interesting and telling to me that we live in the most anxious generation in recorded history. Anxiety is at an all-time high. According to the American Psychological Association, nearly 70% of Americans reported feeling anxious about current events, the economy, their future, their safety, their family safety, their health, paying bills, job security, and the list went on. And this is all happening in the wealthiest, most resource-abundant nation that has ever existed. We have more food, more medical care, more access to finances, more insurance policies, more retirement plans than any generation before us. And yet we worry more. Why is that?

Could it be that there is a direct correlation between worry and the abundance that we’ve been given? But worry is nothing new by a long shot. In fact, Jesus had to address this issue of worry 2,000 years ago because it was a problem then. And so I want us to go ahead and read together these last 10 verses of Matthew 6 just to get the full picture of what He’s saying, and then we’ll take a few minutes to dig into this.

If you’re able, can I ask you to stand one more time as we read God’s Word, Matthew 6, starting in verse 25. This again is part of what is called the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus speaking:

“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?”

That can also be interpreted, “Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature or to his height?” It’s a very ambiguous Greek term. It’s just kind of a phrase that has no answer. It’s like, “Well, of course, I can’t add a foot to my height by worrying about it.” Okay.

Verse 28: “So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They do not toil or spin. And yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed or dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothed the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?”

Verse 31: “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles—or the pagans; it could be interpreted—seek after all these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Thank you. You may be seated.

I think it’s important to point out that Jesus begins this section with the word *therefore*. And as you know, the word *therefore* always points us back to what was said just prior to that. Jesus is referring back to verses 19 to 24 that we looked at together last Sunday where He said these three key things: First, don’t store up treasures on earth because they don’t last. Second, being greedy for earthly things darkens your view of life. In fact, He said it fills your entire being with darkness. And third, craving earthly treasures will ultimately control you.

Now, connect the dots of what He’s saying here. Since earthly treasures decay, since earthly treasures distort how you see life, and since earthly treasures compete for your loyalty—therefore, with that in mind, don’t make them the focus of your life. Because if you do, He’s about to say in this next section, they will become a source of worry.

And then Jesus gives some specific examples. He said, “Don’t worry about what you eat. Don’t worry about what you drink. Don’t worry about what you wear.” And you know, this is almost a throwaway statement in our modern, high-tech culture. Those three things sound ridiculously trivial to us. I dare say there’s not one of us in this room today who worried this past week about whether you’d have anything to eat or drink or wear. Should I go there? Men, the wear part, that’s, you know, “I have nothing to wear.” But in all fairness, men, we do that in front of the refrigerator, don’t we? We open the refrigerator doors and say there’s nothing to eat, and your wife comes along and somehow makes a four-course meal out of the nothing that was there. But really in reality, have any of us spent a moment this past week in fear and anxiety and worry that we’ll have nothing to eat or drink or nothing to wear? None of us have. None.

But if you had been in the crowd in Galilee that day listening to Jesus say these things, I’m telling you, it sure would have made sense to you then. This is why context is so, so important. The people listening to Jesus were familiar with worry. They weren’t middle-class consumers trying to figure out which streaming service to cancel this month so they could save a few bucks. That wasn’t their problem. Most of them lived hand-to-mouth.

Archaeological digs in that area from the first century have revealed that most homes in that area at that time—most homes were no larger than the modern living room. And often they had multiple generations living together. They found grain storage areas in that region, and they’re always very small because there was no surplus. People lived hand-to-mouth. One bad harvest, one major Roman tax increase, one serious illness—it could ruin a family.

Jesus is not talking to insulated people here. He’s talking to people who wake up every morning wondering whether today will be enough. I imagine when they heard Him say, “Don’t worry,” do you think it offended them just a tad? Do you think maybe it troubled them just a little and made them think, “What? What does He mean, ‘don’t worry’? How is it possible not to worry about these things?”

At first they might have thought He was being flippant. All of us, I’m sure, have done this unintentionally, where a friend is in some deep place, some deep dark place, and meaning well, we slap them on the back and say, “Hey, cheer up. Everything will be okay.” Oh boy. Proverbs warns about singing songs to a heavy heart. You got to be careful. I don’t know; maybe these people thought, “Wow, who is this guy? Who does he think he is rocking up here telling us not to worry? Does he have any idea how we live?”

But Jesus was actually teaching them how people in His Kingdom are called to live. Now, what do you suppose His anchor point would be to follow this up? I mean, if you tell people not to worry, surely you got to tell them how not to worry.

This week, Jiren was joking with me and said, “Some Sundays come easier than others.” And he sent me a link to the video “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” I said, “Perfect song for Sunday. That’s the world’s best solution: Don’t worry, be happy.” Oh, that’s all I had to do. Silly me. Just don’t worry then. Just be happy then. Oh, got it. No.

Jesus anchors His instructions not to worry in three solid truths, and this is a game-changer: First, He says you have a Father in heaven. Second, that Father cares for you. And third, He will provide.

First, you have a Father in heaven. Second, He cares for you. And third, He will provide. Those three things are the foundation of everything that Jesus is about to say about worry.

So, first, you have a Father in heaven. More than once in these verses, Jesus references that we have a Father in heaven. Notice He doesn’t say there’s a cosmic force out there. He doesn’t say there’s some impersonal deity out there that you can try to connect with. He says you have a Father. You have a Father in heaven. We don’t blink when we read that. “Of course, Phil. Of course, we have a Father in heaven.” But for that audience, as I’ve told you once before, that would have had quite an impact, that statement.

Now, in the Old Testament, which they knew very well—in the Old Testament, God was sometimes called Father, but it was always used in a collective sense, in a national sense. God is our Father, Israel’s Father. It was never used in a personal sense. Not even rabbis—not even rabbis referred to God as their personal Father. This is why when Jesus shows up on the scene and says, “I and the Father are one. If you have seen Me, you’ve seen the Father,” they wanted to stone Him to death. This concept was blasphemy to them.

But Jesus says to these ordinary, everyday folks, the first step in dealing with your worry is to know that you have a Father who looks out for you. What do fathers do? They protect. They provide. They guide. They care for the details of their children’s lives, even the details that seem insignificant to everyone else. Children with a loving, caring father learn to trust their father without question.

Neither of our children ever came to us when they were younger and said, “Oh, Dad, I’m so worried about the mortgage this month. I know I’m only five, but listen, I want to make sure you’ve got this covered, right? Because five’s young to be homeless.” That never happened. Never happened. Why? Because they had a father who was caring for them. They trusted me. They believed me when I said something would take place.

I still remember Caroline was very little. I don’t remember how young, but she had wanted forever to go to Disney World. And so I sat and talked with her about this one day, and I said, “Okay, honey, here’s the deal. As a family, we will make this a project. We’ll start putting a little aside.” You know, I wanted her to learn the importance of delayed gratification and all of that. Plus, I didn’t want to go to Disney World right away anyway. I said, “We’ll start saving, and like in a couple years we’ll have enough. We’ll plan a trip to Disney World.”

This was the next thing out of her mouth: “Okay, Daddy. Here’s the first thing we’re going to do when we get there.” She said, “We’re gonna ride the teacups. Will you ride the teacups with me, Daddy?”

I said, “Yes.”

She said, “And then we’re going to ride Dumbo.”

And I said, “Oh, baby, honey, listen. No, no, this is going to take time. Like, this is going to be a couple years.”

She goes, “I know. Okay. And then after we do that…” You remember that, Sandy? Wow. I mean, I just stood there like, “This is the greatest example of faith I’ve ever seen.” She had no clue how it was going to work out, no understanding of it. It was beyond her level at that point. And yet her daddy said, “Everything’s going to be good. We’re going to do this.” And she said, “Right on, Dad. I’m with you.”

Jesus doesn’t give some three- or five- or seven-step formula to deal with worry. You don’t have to memorize things and quote them back. You know what He says? He says the first step in dealing with worry is to remember you have a Father who loves you. You know, we earthly fathers do our best to care for our children, but our Heavenly Father does an infinitely better job than the best earthly father could ever dream of doing. I wonder, do we ever pause in the busyness of everything to remember what a privilege it is that we can call God our Father? That’s a privilege. We didn’t earn that. We haven’t been good enough for that. We can call Him our Father because He chose to love us and to redeem us from darkness, adopt us as His children, and make us His own.

Charles Spurgeon put it this way: He said, “It is a wonderful thing to have God for our Father, to be adopted into the family of grace, to know that the great God has taken us to be His children. This is a mercy beyond all thought.”

So first, you have a Father in heaven. Second, that Father cares for you. Jesus gives this illustration in verse 26. He said, “Look at the birds of the air.” I wonder if they were fluttering around and He pointed, “Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your Heavenly Father feeds them.” I don’t want us to miss the extraordinary contrast that Jesus is making in these words.

When people were required to bring their offerings to the temple, many families were too poor to bring the required lamb. And so special provision was made in the law way back to Leviticus for those poor families to bring two small birds instead. Sparrows, we’re told, were the cheapest available birds for sacrifice. They were sold in pairs for a tiny coin at the temple. In fact, Jesus will later say, “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?”

And yet He says, “God in heaven watches over and feeds those tiny sparrows.” Notice He didn’t say what you hear in today’s twisted Christianity sometimes. He didn’t say nature provides for them. Be very careful with these things. He said your Heavenly Father feeds them. What does that mean? It means every worm they pull out of the ground, God gave that to them. Every seed that they found in the crack in a sidewalk, God laid it there for them. Said, “Hey, Jimmy, this is yours. Sally, you got that bug flying through the air over there. Go get it.” God feeds them.

And then He said, having drawn this picture of these completely valueless—in monetary terms—sparrows, and how our Heavenly Father looks after them and feeds them, not one of them falls to the ground without Him knowing. And then He says, “Are you not of more value than they? And if your Father in heaven cares so deeply for these little sparrows, how much more does He care for you?”

Jesus also uses flowers to illustrate this. In that part of the world, in the springtime, there were beautiful—you know, those flowers that I can’t pronounce, anemones, what are they called? Nobody knows what I’m talking about. Anemones, anemones, thank you. They would bloom beautifully. They covered the hillsides. Maybe Jesus told the crowds, “Turn around, look, look at the flowers blowing in the breeze there.” He said to them, “These flowers are beautiful.” But not even Solomon in all his splendor was robed, dressed as magnificently as one of these little flowers. Because God is the One who clothed these flowers.

And yet, despite their beauty, He says, they soon fade and wither and die, and they’re gathered up and they’re thrown into the oven or into the furnace as fuel for the fire. And the lesson here is clear. Jesus is saying, if God puts that much effort into something, if He puts that much care and detail into something that exists only for a few days and then gets tossed into a fire, how much more will He care for you?

And then He adds, “O you of little faith.” And this is where I begin to squirm a bit, because I feel like He’s talking to me and I don’t like that. I don’t think Jesus is shaming these people; I really don’t. I think He’s calling them higher. I think He’s urging them to trust in their Heavenly Father, because their Heavenly Father is trustworthy. He truly cares for them much more than all of nature that you can look at, which He cares for. And He’s encouraging them: higher, come on, put your faith in this One who cares for the smallest details on earth, and yet cares for one who’s much more valuable, who’s made in My very image.

And notice this is the basis for dealing with worry: it’s not the absence of concern; it’s confidence in God’s character. Let me back up and say it again, because I want to remind myself. Dealing with worry, overcoming worry, has nothing to do with the absence of concern. It has everything to do with confidence in God’s character.

We trust people we know. When someone has proven themselves to be trustworthy, we have no trouble trusting them. If you were walking—let’s go back maybe 30 years in Greenville before they fixed up downtown. Remember downtown Greenville back then? It was a rough place. If you were down there for some reason, maybe going to Charlie’s Steakhouse down there, and you and your wife were walking back to the car at night, and a stranger ran up to you and said, “There’s no time for questions. Don’t ask questions. Come with me down this alley right now,” you’d be a little reluctant. You wouldn’t just go, “Sure thing, pal. Let’s run down this dark alley with you.”

But now, exactly the same scenario, exactly the same, except this time it’s your best friend. And he runs up to you and says, “I can’t explain this. Don’t ask questions. Come with me right now.” What are the chances that you would go, “Okay, something’s up. I’m going with him”? The only difference there is you knew one; you didn’t know the other.

Do you understand how important it is for us to get to know our Heavenly Father? You can’t know Him through me standing up here on Sundays. Forget it. The more we know Him, the more He proves Himself, and the more we can rest in His character, which is one of the enemies of worry.

Now Jesus never promises us worry-free lives. But when worry does begin to creep in, He tells us what to do. First, remember that you have a Father in heaven. Remember that your Father in heaven cares for you. And finally, thirdly, remember that He will provide what you need. He’ll provide what you need.

Jesus—I have to believe there’s some humor in this—Jesus gives this example of what we look like when we forget those three things. Look with me at verse 31 and 32. He says, “Therefore, do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles”—I told you it can be translated pagans, unbelievers—”the unbelievers seek after these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them.”

You know, to be blunt, Jesus is saying, if you spend your life worrying about food and clothes and about tomorrow, you’re living just like unbelievers live. They worry because they don’t have a Father watching over them, but you do. Don’t live like them. Your Father in heaven knows what you need. He will provide. So stop living like you don’t have a Father in heaven. Stop living like the pagans.

Worry is going to come and go, maybe just in small doses here and there. And we deal with it, and we put that fire out, and we set things right, and we move on. But when we live drowning in worry, consumed by worry, we aren’t just stressed—I’m talking to myself here—we aren’t just stressed; we are exhibiting unbelief. We’re telling our Heavenly Father without words, “I don’t really believe You’ll take care of me in this situation. Oh, all that theology stuff, I believe all that, but right here in the nitty-gritty, I don’t think You’ll provide for me.” And I must remind myself how absurd that is. It’s living like the pagans do: life with no Father above, no Provider to trust.

And I’m guilty of that. What do unbelievers do? They scramble to solve every problem. They’re frantic to supply every need on their own because that’s all they’ve got. Jesus says that’s how they live. But that’s not how people in My Kingdom need to live. You don’t need to live that way.

If God is our Father, then worry isn’t just fear of circumstances. Worry is actually fear that God has abandoned us, that He’s moved on. He’s like, “Yeah, Phil, I mean, like, how many times am I supposed to be patient with you, Phil? I’m done with you. So, yeah, I’m not caring for you. I’m not providing for you.” You understand the lies Satan puts into our mind because these are the limits we live within. I can’t love anybody perfectly, endlessly. Neither can you. It’s impossible. We can’t do it. We strive for it, but we fail every other, like, 19 minutes or so, don’t we?

Worry isn’t so much about fear of the circumstances. What we’re actually saying underneath is, “I feel like God has abandoned me, like He’s left me as an orphan.” And orphans worry. I mean, orphans hoard. They obsess over tomorrow because no one has promised to come for them. You need to know that when you’re part of God’s family, you will never be an orphan again.

This doesn’t mean worry vanishes forever. You’ll still slip into it. You’ll still wrestle with it. So, what’s the solution? Well, it’s not to beat yourself up. I’ve done plenty of that. It’s not trying harder not to worry. Also, plenty of that. That’s not the solution.

Jesus gives the answer as we wind this down. He says, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, knowing that all these other things will be added to you.” In other words, stop staring at your own little kingdom and seek My Kingdom. Look at the provisions in My Kingdom compared to your puny little empire. Stop striving to build your kingdom bigger so you can have a feeling of less worry. Stop panicking that you’ll lose it. Stop fighting to maintain control. You’ll never have enough possessions or money or control to eliminate worry from your life.

Do a little study sometime on lottery winners. It’s rather interesting and a tad depressing. The majority of people who win, you know, 100 million or two billion or whatever it’s up to now—’cause I don’t play it that often, so I don’t keep up with it that often. But you look at these people. I mean, they hit the jackpot, baby: $2 billion. They’re set for life. You follow them through, it’s really shocking. The majority of them are bankrupt within a few years. Possessions and abundance do not dissolve worry. In fact, they increase it.

I’ve told Sandy I want to get rid of stuff in our house. Like, I just want to get rid of stuff. The more stuff you have, the more stuff you got to dust. Did you know that? I figured that out late in life. But that’s—and it’s like the more stuff you got to worry about. “Oh, I knocked this off and broke it.” Who cares? Thank the Lord. One less thing.

See, the solution for worry isn’t to try to tighten up our kingdom. It’s not to try to improve our kingdom. The solution, Jesus says, is to focus on His Kingdom and realize that’s where everything we need comes from—from the goodness of our Heavenly Father who cares for us and who will provide for us. And when we place those truths in front of us, worry starts to lose its power. Again, it’ll never go away.

I believe this is true. I’ve read a lot on this: that we are essentially the culmination of every experience we’ve had in our life. Even, they say, prior to birth, we’re the culmination of every encounter, of every conversation, of every good thing, of every bad thing. We’re the culmination of that. And so we all grow up differently. I worry about things that my wife doesn’t worry about. She’s like, “Wait.”

I go, “I know. I’ve got to worry; I just have to worry about this.”

She’s such an even-keeled person, just like her dad. And it annoys the fire out of me when I see how calm she is about things. It’s like, “Do you not care about my worry?”

But see, we’re all different. And so I have areas in my life—things I used to worry about that God has genuinely helped me with in these areas. So there’s good news. I can show tremendous growth in some areas. But I’ve still got some that just eat me up, and I go back to them. I say, “Lord, I’m sorry. Here I am again worrying about this: my children, my health, whatever it happens to be. Oh, Lord, here I am again. I’m so sorry, Lord.”

I got to remind myself it’s not about “Don’t worry, be happy.” It’s about reminding myself I have a Father in heaven who cares for me and He will provide. When we place those truths in front of us, worry does start to dissipate—not because our circumstances have improved, but because we’ve been anchored in a reality much bigger than whatever is weighing upon us.

By the way, this isn’t a call to spiritualize away our real material needs. Jesus has already acknowledged that they’re real. We’ll always have things pressing on us, bringing fear. But I’ve discovered a truth that I want to share with you. I’ve found, if I’m honest, when I worry, it’s usually a signal that I’ve stopped seeking and I’ve started striving again. I’ve shifted from dependence to self-reliance. “I got this, God. We’ll talk to you in the morning, but I got this right now.” Self-reliance. I prefer to call it rugged individualism because it sounds more manly, but I know better. I know it’s just another way of saying I forgot I had a Father.

So, what do we do when worry creeps in? Because it will. It will for some of you. Before this day is over, you’ll be attacked by worry about something. When worry comes, we say, “I have a Father in heaven. He knows my name. He cares for me. He knows my needs. He has never failed me; He’s not going to start now. He’s already given His Son for me; why would He withhold what I need today?”

We pause. We remember His goodness. We recount His faithfulness. And then we do the next thing that He has put in front of us, whatever we’re called to do. We don’t sit in a room somewhere in a corner. We get up, we go, “Boy, I sure was worried about that, but I’ve reminded myself I have a Heavenly Father who cares for me and He will provide. So now, Lord, what was that next thing You wanted me to do today? Oh, yes, here we go. I’m going to just step out and obey You.”

We put His Kingdom first in this moment, in this decision, in this conversation, in this task. We bring it down to practical steps.

When Jesus says, “Don’t be anxious, don’t worry,” He’s not putting another burden on already heavy shoulders that we can’bear. He’s inviting us to remember that we have a Father in heaven and He will take care of us.

I pray that we can all continue to learn together what it really means to be sons and daughters who trust their Father. You know what that did to me when my little kids trusted me? I felt like Superman. Imagine what that does to our Heavenly Father when those moments come rushing in and that worry swells up, and then we remember, “Oh no, hi Lord. I know You’re up there. Thank you. I trust You.” Imagine what that does—I don’t know, I’m putting it in human terms, but just imagine the joy that brings our Heavenly Father.

I pray that we could walk this road together, learning what it really, really means to trust our Father, not just in what we believe, but in how we actually live. I’m on that journey. How about you?