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PENTECOST 2
YEAR
A ISAIAH
49:8-16 1 CORINTHIANS
4:1-5 MATTHEW
6:24-24 MAY 24, 25,
2008 Matthew 6:25
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or
what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life
more than food and the body more than
clothing? This passage
from Matthew’s gospel is rather timely. It comes to us in a time when
gasoline for our cars is nearing $4.00 a gallon, diesel fuel for truckers
is more and groceries are becoming even more costly each time you go to
the store. You open the utility bill and discover that it is higher than
you thought. Maybe you need medications that cost more than you can
possibly pay and you wonder what you are going to do. Into the concerns of
this time in our lives come these words from our Lord. The Lord Jesus
tells us to not worry about such things. Do not worry about your life or
about what you are going to eat or what clothes you are going to wear.
These words come on the heels of the verses about serving God or mammon.
We hear these words from the Lord and we wonder what we are supposed to
do. We have to eat. We have to have a place to live and we need to have
transportation. We need gasoline to get to work and to get our kids to
school. Jesus says, Therefore I
tell you, do not worry about your life. Matthew
6:26 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? We worry about
the things in our lives everyday. We buy makeup to cover our faces and
deodorant to cover our smell. We buy designer clothes to cover our bodies.
We fuss about what we are going to wear when our closets are full of
clothes. To put this into perspective we just need to look around. Look up
in the sky and look at the birds. Have you ever seen a skinny sparrow?
Cardinals have wonderful color and the spring flowers provide plenty of
color. Do they spend hours in worry and anxiety? No, even by instinct they
birds live their lives in thoughtless dependence upon God. Has God failed
to care for insignificant birds? If God cares for birds, which are
creatures of much less value than you and me, will God not care for us? To
the birds, God is both Creator and Sustainer. To the Christian, God is our
Heavenly Father. How can we doubt God’s care? Worry does not see matters
clearly. It allows our vision of the Heavenly Father to be hidden. It
overlooks the care of God for insignificant creatures, such as the birds.
It looks at the problems as being enormous and overwhelming instead of
looking at God as our creator and sustainer. Even I as I say
this I know that it is easier to say than to do. I struggle just like
everyone else does. I drive by the gas pump and wonder how far it can go.
I go to the grocery store and see the price of groceries. I am tempted to
focus on the economic situation and my checkbook rather than on the Lord
my God. Just when my mind starts to wander away from the Lord, God brings
me back. Sometimes God speaks to me through the voice of my wife sometimes
through the voice speaking to my mind and heart that reminds me that the
Lord is with me. There are many of us that struggle financially. I am not
minimizing the reality of the situation. I am not questioning your faith
or your intent to serve the Lord. I am asking you to not forget who your
God is. Your God will stand with you because you are important to God.
Your God is not food or drink. Your God is not the clothes you wear or the
gasoline you put into your car. Your God is more than any of these
things. Matthew
6:31
Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will
we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ We hear these
words from Jesus but we do worry. In Matthew 6:19 Jesus had talked about
treasures on earth. We do store them up; and we worry about protecting
them. We lock our doors and windows. Some of us even have alarm systems to
protect our treasures. We put our money in a bank where there are large
vaults and locks to protect our treasures. We have insurance policies so
that if something happens to our treasures we can replace them. We worry
about our treasures and seek to do everything possible to protect
them. What about
people in other places? I am thinking about houses in what we call third
world countries. Sometimes they are nothing more than cardboard boxes with
no windows to shut and no doors to lock. The same is true of many of the
huts we see in pictures or on television. These people have no treasures
to protect. They do not worry about protecting their treasures. Are they
more faithful believers than we with all our
possessions? Probably not
because in these verses Jesus talks about worrying about food or drink and
clothing. People in third world countries do worry about whether they will
have food to eat or water to drink. They worry about warm winter clothing
or shade from the hot summer sun. People in richer
parts of the world worry about what type of steak to prepare tonight or
what restaurant to eat at tonight, what type of wines should go with each
course of their meal, or what is the appropriate set of clothes they
should wear for the upcoming function. Whether rich or poor people
worry. Most of us want
to obey our Lord’s command to not worry about life. We just can't do it.
We may tell ourselves over and over again, "Don't worry. Don't worry.
Don't worry. Don't worry. Don't worry. Don't worry." That usually doesn't
help much. Those words keep reminding us that we are worrying. Then we
worry about worrying too much. How can I not
worry? How do I trust in the Lord to provide for me? In some ways these
words from our Lord are about the priorities in our lives. Worry says I do
not trust that God will take care of me. I worry and my focus turns from
the Lord to my problems. What is most important to you? Is it most
important that you have the best and most expensive clothes on your back
or can you settle for something that looks nice but costs less? The Lord
tells us to stop worrying. He tells us to look around us and discover that
God is caring for God’s children. The Lord does not tell us to deny our
own needs. He is not telling us to walk ahead blindly while we starve and
thirst. Our Lord Jesus teaches us to seek the Matthew 6:33, 34 But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today. AMEN |