Overcoming Anxiety
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2012 · 19 February 2012
What is the Christian view of material things? What is the Christian view of money and possessions? Where do we stand and what does the Bible teach? What should be our perspective on both the luxuries and the necessities of life? Well the answer to the questions is given here by our own Lord Jesus Christ. For what you have in Matthew 6: 19-34 is the greatest statement Jesus ever made on the view that we must have toward material things.
We have studied verses 19-30 before and now we are coming to the climax of what Jesus is teaching us. We believe God's going to take us to heaven when we die, but we sometimes don't believe God's going to provide us with our daily necessities or take care of the length of our life. Jesus here teaches us where our commitment as Christians has to be and what He will do for us if we follow His mission.
Matthew 6:31-34, “therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. 34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”
Three times in Matthew 6, first of all in verse 25, it says, "Do not be anxious." Secondly, in verse 31, "do not be anxious." And finally in Verse 34, "do not be anxious." The key to the whole passage then is, "don't be anxious." That command is illustrated, and reasoned with the incredible skill of the master teacher, the Lord Jesus Christ. It defines the proper attitude with which disciples of Jesus should live their lives in a material world. And yes, that includes you.
Verse 31, "do not be anxious," kind of emphasizes, "don't start worrying." If you don't already have that bad habit, don't start it. You say, "Well, we have to eat, and we have to drink, and we have to be clothed. Aren't those great concerns?" They are great concerns. Those are the necessities of life. And the Lord sort of sums up the necessities of life: food, water, and clothing.
You know, that's less of an issue to us than it would be to somebody living in Palestine, because there weren't any stores where you could just go and get whatever you wanted. Food...you had to raise it, farm it, or go to the marketplace. Water is a great concern in that semi-arid part of the world. And clothing in most cases, you had to make it.
In fact, those people, for the most part, lived just to survive...eating and drinking. In the burning summer, the streams dried up. The water supply was, every summer, minimal. To the poorer people, an annual change of clothing was by no means guaranteed. And when winter came, it could be cold, and it could snow in Jerusalem.
Jesus gave us an example regarding food in verse 26. He says, "Look at the birds of the air." Now it may well have been that as He was standing on the mountain north of the Sea of Galilee on that sloping hillside, He might have just pointed up as a flock of birds flew by. And by the way, Palestine is full of birds.
There is a book called All the Birds of the Bible. And the author calls Galilee the crossroads of bird migration. When birds across Europe, all the way from Western Europe clear through Eastern Europe, migrate south as they do every year for the winter, they all fly through Israel. That's true even today.
More Israeli pilots have been killed by birds coming through the cockpit of their jets than by the enemies of Israel. It's a serious issue. So the Israelis know their migrating patterns. They know what time of year they come. And they also know the altitude at which they fly. And it's always the same every year, and so they have charted all the birds that migrate to the north of Africa.
So perhaps Jesus looks up and sees a flock of birds. He says, "Look, they don't sow, they don't reap, in fact, they just fly around and pick up the seed you sow. They just come down and eat the crop that you're growing. They don't gather yet Your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?" They're not worried about some unforeseen future or some unforeseeable event.
This is not an excuse for idleness. Birds, though fed by God, don't sit on some branch waiting for the food to be dropped in their beak unless they're baby birds being served by their parents. They search for it, and they find it. They gather the insects, the worms, and the seeds. They migrate to where the food is. They do all this by instinct because they're endowed by their Creator with that instinct as His way of carrying for them.
This argument really is profound and powerful. Life is a gift from God. As long as He has designed to give it to His children who do what God wants them to do, which is to seek first the kingdom of God, He will sustain it. If He gave you the gift of physical life and called you to serve Him in this world, He'll give you the necessary food to sustain that calling.
Look at verse 27. It's quite an interesting statement. "And which of you, by being anxious, by worry, can add a single cubit to his lifespan." People really do worry about their health. We're a generation of people literally almost cultic about exercise, almost out of control about vitamins and supplements and health.
The anxiety of death, the fear of illness, forces us to struggle to stay alive at the highest level of health that we can. We preoccupy ourselves with the body and pride ourselves with being in shape, whatever the society says that shape should be.
People make investments in exercise equipment, health club memberships, medical assistance vitamins, special diets, and you know it goes on and on. And sometimes behind it is worry. And Jesus says, "You cannot add one fraction to your lifespan by worry."
One doctor said, "Worry affects the circulation, the heart, the glands and the entire nervous system. I have never known a man to die of overwork, but many who died of worry." A person may literally worry himself to death, worry himself into bad health. But never will you worry yourself into a longer life.
Jesus is talking about fearing that you're not going to be cared for, fearing that you're not going to have what you need, fearing that you're not going to be protected, you're going to be forgotten just like that. And He says, "Well, look at the lilies of the field."...Verse 28. "They don't toil, and they don't spin." Look at their beauty. "Even Solomon in all his glory didn't clothe himself like one of these."
And Christ is not really engaging in hyperbole here. He's stating fact...no garment loomed with the finest thread is anything but sackcloth when placed beside the petal of a flower. So Jesus said, "Why do you worry? Why do you spend so much effort in the matter of your clothes? Look at the wildflowers. Kings haven't been so magnificently robed. Flowers put all their robes to shame."
You remember the famous incident of the Lord's earthly life and ministry when he's sleeping in the stern of the boat on the Sea of Galilee, and the storm was going, and the water started to come into the boat. The sea became very boisterous, and the disciples, who are fishermen, became worried, and they said, "Master, we are going to perish." And what did he say to them in Luke's Gospel? He said, "Where is your faith?"
Listen, we have a Father who cares for us. We have nothing to fear, no matter what happens, no matter if the whole economy crashes, no matter if all the banks lose our money, we have a Father who cares for us...that's enough for me. I don't have any fear. I don't have any anxiety as long as I know my Father cares.
There's no promise that God is going to make you rich. There's no promise that God is going to give you more than you need. There's no promise that God is going to lavish you like he did Job or Abraham. But God will take care of your necessities if you first seek the kingdom of God.
Look at verse 32, "For all these things, the Pagans eagerly seek." You see, worry belongs to people who don't have God as their Father. It's for the faithless to worry. Naturally, the Pagans, the Gentiles who do not acknowledge God, who are not the children of a loving father, who have no claim on God's provision, who are utterly ignorant of His supply...we expect them to worry.
See, the unbelievers are in complete spiritual darkness. Thus, they have the wrong idea of the God of the universe. They don't understand how God is involved in the lives of His people.
So they're like the rich man who just kept stacking it up in the barns and stacking it up in the barns so that he could eat, drink, and be merry before he died. Unregenerate people are literally totally consumed in material gratification. They don't have any other resource; it's all up to them.
So how should Christians behave? Jesus gives us in these verses the main reason why not to worry about the necessities of life, because here Jesus is saying that God will provide all the things necessary to survive like food, drink and clothing so that you can focus yourselves on His mission.
Just look at the biography of William Carey who went to India with his wife and his children. And he found himself in a very remote part of India outside of Calcutta with no food, no shelter, no nothing, and really no money to buy anything. But never wavering in his faith, he just watched God supply and supply.
And first it was a little lean-to shack to live in. It was very uncomfortable and very difficult for his wife and their children, one a relatively young one just born before they left. And it was about a five-month journey on a ship to get there from England.
But then things began to turn, and they began to cultivate the ground. They found a new place. And they began to grow food, and it flourished. In fact, he was so good, being a botanist that villages began to arise all around his little farm on both sides of the river where he was. And then, in God's wonderful mercy, he was offered a position of significance with a salary that was quite large, and he accepted that as the providence of God.
He had lived through the testing of the lean times, and now God provided enough for his family, and enough for his ministry, and enough for translating the Word of God, which he eventually did into 11 languages. There's something wonderful about being in that position of utter dependence so you can see the faithful hand of God.
Sometimes it's good for us to divest what we have, just to back up and get ourselves into position where we're more dependent and can rejoice in the freedom of being unencumbered, and knowing we've done what God wanted us to do with what He gave us, investing it in eternal things, our work is our ministry.
Pay attention to God’s promise in verse 33, "But seek first His Kingdom and His Righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you." What's Jesus been talking about? Three things: food, drink, and clothing, all the basics of life. That's the theme of the text. Jesus is saying, "God will add all these things to you if you stop worrying and start seeking His Kingdom and His Righteousness."
Why do people worry? Well, because they're concerned about the future. So in Verse 34, again here's the same phrase: "Do not be anxious, for tomorrow." God is the God of tomorrow, just like He's the God of today. And His mercies are new every morning. Great is His faithfulness. Look at Lamentations 3.
Worry is a tremendous force. It can warp your personality, it can steal your joy, it can rob your peace, it can foul up your relationships, it can cripple your faith, it can harm your usefulness, and it can wreck your Christian testimony. It creates havoc in your heart and the hearts of those who are watching your life. Jesus then says, "For tomorrow will take care for itself." For tomorrow will bring its own anxieties. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Fear, you know is a liar. Fear tells you tomorrow is something to be afraid of. Fear tells you you're not going to have what you need tomorrow. Fear tells you you're not going to be up to it. Fear is a liar for the Christian because in everything that you're ever going to go through, in every trial, in every temptation, God will provide sufficient grace to sustain you.
And worrying is really a sin. You see worry disbelieves Scripture. And you can go around your whole life and say, I believe in the inerrancy of the Bible, I believe in the authority of the Scripture, I believe in inspiration of every Word, and then just live your life worrying. And so you are saying one thing out of one side of your mouth and something else out of the other. Because why would you say how much you believe the Bible and then worry whether God's going to fulfill what He promises in it?
So what does this all mean? It simply means to set the focus of your life on the spiritual matters every day, right? Isn't this exactly what the Apostle Paul said in Colossians 3:2-3, "Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Get your priorities right. Pour yourself into the Kingdom of God. Pursue righteousness, and then you will surely enjoy the results.
When the church corporately seeks the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, one of the things they must do is to help those in the congregation who are needy and who worry. This is a huge challenge in this economy and it will challenge us as Christians to carefully look at what we spend on ourselves verses what we need to do to help others, especially those in our own church.
Now we need to be aware that there are consequences if you don't seek first the Kingdom, if the priority of your life is not the advancement of the Kingdom of God, if the goal of your life is not the pursuit of the righteousness of Christ. If that's not your priority, then God does not necessarily have to provide for your daily necessities.
It may be that He withholds some things as a chastening. But you have a loving Father who knows your needs and who has pledged to meet them all, and asks of you that if you'll seek the spiritual, He'll provide the physical...that's it.
And He provides in different ways. For some, it's just the necessities. And for some, for a time only, it's just the necessities. For others, He gives with great generosity according to His own purposes. It's God who gives you the power to get wealth, and God does it differently in different people's lives.
But all of us have this one mandate in common: seek first His Kingdom and His Righteousness, and then He'll take care of the physical. You remember in the Old Testament, the prayer, "Don't give me so much that I forget You, and so little that I'm angry with You. Just give me what I need." And if He gives more, pour it into the Kingdom, and He will make sure all your needs are met.
Do you really believe what is in the bible? Are you committed to seeking first the kingdom of God? What does that mean to you practically? Well pray and ask God, and He will give you the answer, Amen?