Scripture reading: Isaiah 49:8-16.

Sermon text: Matthew 6:24-34.

As we’ve examined passages from the Sermon on the Mount lately, I’ll confess I find myself conducting an examination of my own life and wondering how, after nearly two millennia, Jesus’ words still speak to me. While I find His words challenge me — to say the least — I also find that this sermon comforts me as well. Jesus knows our weaknesses; He knows our temptations, our cares, and our fears. Today’s passage helps us understand how Our Lord wishes to help us with what many would consider both one of humanity’s greatest blessings and greatest curses: The concept of the future.

Of all creation, only humans perceive time as past, present, and future. You won’t find an advanced civilization that didn’t believe at least 2 things about time:

1. 1.The future exists;
   

2. 2.Some way exists for us to foresee and predict the future.
   

Every civilization employed prophets or seers of some sort to try to predict the future. We have oracle bones from millennia of Chinese history and records of the astrologers of Babylon. We have detailed accounts of the Greek oracles (especially the Oracle of Delphi). The Roman Senate considered the Sibylline Oracles so sacred that no one could consult them without senatorial approval. Even more primitive cultures often passed on stories of people with the talent of foretelling the future.

However, we face a serious problem when we consider the future: it doesn’t yet exist. No moment truly exists in the physical world until it appears.

Why, then, do we care so much about the future? Why do we spend so much of our times preparing for that which doesn’t exist? Why do we both fear and anticipate incidents that may never occur in moments that may never come to pass?

Jesus understood the concept of anxiety, especially regarding the future. As hard as it may seem for us to believe, we really have no worries to compare to the Jews of the first century A.D., the culture of Jesus. The Jews had lived for nearly a century under Roman rule of some sort, and everyone with any sense of the pulse of Jewish society could feel the tension building as resentment to the Romans grew under the surface. The prophecies of Daniel had foretold that a Messiah would come and reestablish the Jewish kingdom, ushering in a period of perfect justice. Most Jews of Jesus’ time would have interpreted these prophecies to mean that the Messiah would lead the Jews to freedom from the Romans and then to domination of all the Gentiles that had oppressed the Jews for centuries by then. As the time drew nearer for the fulfillment of Daniel’s prophecies, anxiety heightened to near frenzy level.

The Jews had other, more practical reasons to worry about the future. Famine occurred with regularity in the eastern half of the first-century Roman Empire, especially since the Roman emperors insisted on shipping almost all Egyptian grain to Rome to feed the unemployed masses of the city. No one knows how to worry about the future like a farmer, especially when even the right weather at the wrong time can ruin a year’s work. A drought or flood at the wrong time of the year would exacerbate the grain shortages that sometimes occurred in the Jewish areas of Galilee and Judea.

Yet, Jesus, having finished discussing the Mosaic Law, had now turned to practical matters in life, one of which involved the typical human response to the future.

I need to make a caveat here: Jesus, in this passage, does not forbid planning for the foreseeable and inevitable future. We all know that we will face certain issues as we age, and any wise person will plan for those issues. Jesus would later emphasize the importance of looking ahead, especially in regards to our commitment to His kingdom (Luke 14:25-33). Instead, Jesus addressed our tendency to worry needlessly about the future that may never occur. We can, and should, plan for eventualities, but we should not worry about possibilities.

The sermon text opens with as Jesus begins to address our worrying about the future. Jesus’ first point involves one of our greatest worries: Financial security. No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”

We really should wonder at ourselves. We sit (or, in my case, stand) here in America, the wealthiest nation on earth. You’ve probably heard this “Condense the world’s population into 100 people” before, but 3 statistics bear mentioning here: The group would consist of 60 Asians, 14 Africans, 12 Europeans, 8 Latin Americans, 5 from the USA and Canada, and 1 from the South Pacific; 5 would control 32% of the entire world's wealth; all 5 would be US citizens; 33 would be receiving --and attempting to live on-- only 3% of the income of “the village” (source: “If the World Were a Village of 100 People,” Family Care Foundation, http://www.familycare.org/special-interest/if-the-world-were-a-village-of-100-people/). Even if the statistics don’t exactly fit, you still can see the point.

Yet, it seems we constantly worry and obsess about money. I’ve had the chance to spend time around people who should have considered themselves blessed that they never had to worry about money. I noticed that instead, most of them seem constantly concerned with how to make more money. Whenever humans set a goal of absolute financial security, we run the risk of serving the money instead of using it to serve us.

What attitude should we have about wealth? I once heard a story about a man who walked into a bank and asked to borrow around $500. When the banker asked for collateral, the man produced several thousand dollars worth of stock certificates. The banker, stumped, processed the loan. On his way out the door, the man turned to the banker and said, “Wow, that was easy. Just imagine that the bank down the street wanted $50 for a safety deposit box to hold those certificates!” The man certainly didn’t allow his wealth to control him.

Jesus then turned to other matters that seem to control us: food and clothing. I believe we can safely extrapolate to include shelter in this as well, since in Jesus’ time a person’s cloak often provided for external covering in bad weather, especially when traveling.

“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. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?” When we look at the birds, we see no worries about food. If God cares for the birds, He will certainly care for those He created in His image.

In a rhetorical question, Jesus asked, “And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” Medical studies now tell us that anxiety can actually shorten our lives, not lengthen them.

Jesus’ words on clothing show us a sense of humor. I’m certain we all know of people who obsess about their clothing and who will spend fortunes on clothes they may wear only a few times. “And why are you anxious about clothing? 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.” I’ve seen no one in my lifetime with the wealth or splendor of Solomon; yet, Jesus said, even Solomon’s finest finery couldn’t touch the beauty of a field of lilies on a spring day.

So, Jesus said, “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.” Jesus used the term “Gentiles” to refer to unbelievers. The Jews would have seen the splendid clothing of the Herods and Roman elite who came to Galilee and Judea; some of the Jews may even have coveted clothing such as what the Romans wore. According to Jesus, God knows the needs of His people and will meet those needs.

So many of Jesus’ targets revolve around one major problem with humans: We want control of our lives. We love to live in the illusion that we control our destinies. If we have enough money, we can afford everything we need or want. If we have enough food, we’ll avoid starvation. If we have enough clothes, we’ll never feel discomfort or humiliation.

We want control. History tells us that regardless of our greatest attempts to control our lives and circumstances, accidents happen; financial meltdowns will destroy wealth accumulated over generations; illnesses will cripple the healthiest and strongest of us; and, inevitably, death will take us all, regardless of the size of our bank accounts or clothes closets.

I’ve read the book The Master and Margarita by Soviet author Mikhail Bulgakov. I love the line from Satan in the book: “Allow me to inquire how man can control his own affairs when he is not only incapable of compiling a plan for some laughably short term such as, say, a thousand years, but cannot even predict what will happen to him tomorrow?” We cannot achieve complete success in controlling our lives; we never have, and we never will.

Instead, we must follow the commands of Jesus. “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” We must seek God’s kingdom; we must confess Jesus as Lord of our lives, believing in His resurrection, so He can rule over our lives. We must also accept that, as our sovereign, Jesus will determine what we need and provide for those needs. We must remember that Jesus will provide for us with a different goal than we would follow. Jesus wishes to mold us into eternal beings in a new Creation, not into people that nonbelievers may consider fashionable.

We must also follow God’s righteousness in our lives. While I’m too old to deny the gray areas of life, we find that God gives clear direction about what we should and should not do. We must love God with all our hearts, minds, souls, and strength. Doing so will lead us to confess Jesus as Lord. We must also love our neighbors as ourselves. In following this command, we may find ourselves giving to others instead of indulging ourselves in our latest desires.

The passage concludes with Jesus giving us the best advice about the future. “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

As in the previous 2 sermons from the Beatitudes, I confess that I stand here a sinner. I’ve spent a great deal of my life anticipating troubles that never came, only to realize I wasted time in those worries. My health has suffered from worries more than once. I can give you testimony after testimony to tell you how God has provided for my family and me in times of financial distress and illness. Still, I fight the tendency to worry.

Part of me believes my tendencies come from a mistaken concept of God. If you’re like me, you’ve heard a lot about a judgmental God that can’t wait to wreck us for our sins. Yes, we will face judgment. Yes, our sins often bring consequences we’d rather not face. However, the more I read the words of Jesus, the more I realize that our Father wants to bless us, not destroy us. I read that our Father wants to provide for us and give us joy instead of worry. I read that our Father wants us to trust Him to provide for us, knowing that He loves us and will always care for His children. I read that our Father wants to prepare us for a place where we will abide with Him forever and never know want or unfulfilled desires.

In short, God calls us to live for His kingdom, now and in the life to come. When we live in God’s kingdom, we allow our Sovereign to provide for us. We allow Him to guide us so we have no fear of tomorrow while we live in His will. The kingdom of God has come, and it will outlast everything we may worry about for tomorrow or next decade or next century. The kingdom of God will outlast our nation and our civilization. And, in eternity, as we praise God for His grace and goodness, we will do so in the joy of knowing He has added all things to all who seek Him and His righteousness.