Matthew 6:25-34
Have you ever been anxious? Most of us have been anxious and the truth is that many of us live with anxiety, not as a companion but as an almost constant adversary, questioning everything about us and trying to unravel everything given to us. The Bible says some very specific things about anxiety. Paul wrote“Be anxious for nothing”; in today’s text alone Jesus said “Do not worry” three different times and yet I’m concerned that we have actually made these statements about anxiety another reason to be anxious. We have made worry and anxiety about us; another hurdle to leap, another task to complete, another temptation to resist and so what we have believed to be our greatest weapon against anxiety has become the very thing that anxiety wants us to lean upon, ourselves. We try harder, we think better, we confess more positively and all the while our battle with anxiety has made us more anxious because anxiety is not about us. I want to begin this morning by apologizing, I have perpetuated this cycle of anxiety by believing and even teaching the words of Jesus, “Do not worry” without teaching from the heart of Jesus. In our text today Jesus is not irritated or frustrated with us, He is kind and comforting toward us; He is not telling us to get rid of our anxiety He is exposing for us what anxiety is, where it comes from and how it is defeated. Jesus reveals to us in this passage and how it fits into the Sermon on the Mount that worry is Satan’s attack on God’s glory by distracting us from worship. It is as if when we turn our hearts toward Jesus Satan attempts to turn our minds back to ourselves and our circumstances, our fears and our deeply planted and often hidden deceived beliefs about God’s love and our position as His children. Anxiety attacks God’s character and it attempts to diminish our value to God. I believe that most of us believe that peace is the opposite of anxiety but peace is anxiety’s executioner, peace comes beyond our understanding as Paul put it and defeats the anxiety that has attempted to rob joy, lie about God and devalue us as God’s possession. Worship is the opposite of anxiety because worship trusts while anxiety worries. Isaiah 26:3 says “You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusts in you.” Worship reveals trust and it creates peace which destroys anxiety. What we are going to begin learning today is that Jesus has taught us about worship so that He can show us that anxiety is no match for the peace of God that is revealed when the children of God trust their Father and give Him complete mastery over their hearts and lives. Jesus does this by questioning anxiety and we are going to do the same thing over the next few weeks, we are going to ask ourselves Jesus’questions and I pray that we will find the anxiety destroying embrace of God in His answers.