Math, Mosquitoes, and Four-Way Stops

Transcripts are computer-generated and may not be 100% correct

Justin: Good morning, everybody, hope you’re doing well today. I tend to be an anxious person, and I've learned that that comes in handy with my partner Manuel and I, because if I don't worry about the time then we will not get there. I kid you not he was two hours late for our first date and he kept texting me saying I'm on the way and after the first hour I was like I don't think he's on the way. I thought I was getting ghosted for sure. Speaking of Halloween, right? But eventually two hours later he texted me and said hey I'm here and sure enough there he was two hours later.

And so now over time I've just learned that if we are going to make it somewhere on time then I have to be the one to stress out about the time. And it's gotten to the point now where he likes to get sarcastic with me a little bit and so he uses this baby voice and he says, “We better leave because I know you're gonna be anxious about getting there on time.” And then I turn to him and say, “You're right.”

I think that we all have things that make us anxious. It might be being on time for something. It could be large crowds. The list could go on and on but I think one thing that we all have in common is that when we are feeling anxious about something the last thing that we want to hear is someone say “don't worry” because it's like, “oh, thanks I didn't think about that. That's really good advice.” But that is exactly the advice that Jesus gives in our scripture text for this morning: don't worry.

And so we're continuing on in our Sermon on the Mount series and I'm gonna be reading from Matthew chapter 6:25-35 and it says this:

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. 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 more value than they?

And which of you by worrying can add a single hour of span to your life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field how they grow. They neither toil nor spin yet I tell you even Solomon and all of his glory was not clothed like one of these but if God so closed the grass of the field which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven will he not much more clothe you? You of little faith.

Therefore do not worry saying what will we eat or what will we drink or what will we wear? For it is the Gentiles who seek all these things and indeed your Heavenly Father knows that you need all these things but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all of 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.

So before we dive into our scripture passage for this morning I do want to preface this with a word to people who maybe struggle clinically with anxiety or depression and maybe you have panic attacks as a result of that. This message today is not directed at you. Anxiety is real and there are wonderful therapists and medications that can help move you from a place of crippling anxiety to a place where you can manage that really well and it is a good and holy thing for you to seek out the therapy or the medication that you need to be the best version of you that you want to be.

And so the last thing that I would want in a sermon like this on anxiety is for it to cause more anxiety in your life or for you to not receive it the way that I'm intending it to be received. Jesus tells us to cast our worries onto him for he cares for us and it would break my heart for a message like this today to cause more anxiety and worry in your life. And so I just want you to know that if you are dealing with anxiety and you're in the room today that God sees you, God cares about you, and God's advice to you is not to simply stop worrying because I think we all would do that if we could.

And so my hope for those who do have anxiety is that you would hear this message and if there's something that resonates with you on your journey that you're on, take that and put it in your spiritual toolbox and if there's nothing that resonates with you let this one go and don't think about it one more time and that and that'll be okay.

All right anytime you see the word in the Bible "therefore" we learn in seminary that you're supposed to ask “what is it there for?” right? And so it means that there's something that precedes that that is important for us to understand. If I said my co-worker tested positive for COVID therefore I need to take a COVID test and all you heard was therefore I need to take a COVID test then you could make all sorts of assumptions about why I need to take a COVID test right. You could think, “Oh he must have not been able to taste his sandwich at lunch” or “his nose started running and he needs to take a test now,” which none of those things would be true.

And in our text this morning it starts out "therefore do not worry." We're following directly after Marta's sermon last week on storing up treasure in heaven and the conclusion that Jesus comes to is that you can't serve both God and money. You can only be devoted to one so either you can be devoted to Yahweh or you can be devoted to money and both of those things require your dedication and your loyalty. So if our hope and our trust is in God then we can rest in knowing that God is a good parent that provides for us and gives us what we need but if our trust and our hope is in money then there's plenty for us to be anxious about because we could spend it all, we could lose it all, someone could take all of our money from us, it could make us more greedy and so Jesus wants us to see God as a constant presence in our lives and if God is the one that we're leaning on then there will certainly be enough and we will be satisfied but if money is what we're leaning on then there will never be enough, it will never be satisfied, we will always want more of it.

Jesus is not trying to be a good psychologist here, he's trying to be a good rabbi for his disciples. Before he sends them out to share the good news he wants to make sure that they are prepared for the journey, he wants to make sure that their hearts are aligned with his and in the right place as they go out on mission together. If you remember Jesus sends them out with absolutely nothing but a staff, he tells them that they can't take any extra clothes, any extra food, any extra water, all they can have is this staff and so they go out on this journey with nothing and at the Last Supper right before Jesus is arrested he asked them, "When I sent you out did you lack anything?" and all the disciples answer, "No, we didn't lack a thing."

And I can't speak for anybody else, all I can speak for is me but I just know that this has been true in my own life. You know when I, I can't remember if I shared this or not already, you'll probably hear multiple stories for me over again over the years but when I first started talking about going into ministry my dad was very antagonistic about it because he said that I would never be able to make ends meet and pay my bills and he wanted me to go into the medical field, something that would offer me much more security.

And on top of that while I was having that pressure in my life I was also obviously dealing with and knowing things about me that nobody else did and so I was wondering if there was a place for me in ministry at all and so I had a lot of hard conversations with God and certainly some anxiety built up around that and I remember saying like okay if I, if I'm gonna go into ministry, if I'm gonna do this then you have to take care of me, like you have to open doors for me and provide a way and God has been faithful every step of the way in my journey even coming here and learning simultaneously that my dad had stage four lung cancer.

And trying to grapple with that again I said all right like if I do this you've got to be faithful and you've got to take care of this and God has been faithful every time I've taken a step of faith and I know that there are people in the room who are saying you're preaching to the choir because I've been there I've done that and God has been really really good to me too we could probably circle up and spend hours talking about how good God has been and yet there are also struggles that make us question things, right?

Like there are people in our city who are without a home and they'll freeze to death this winter because they have nowhere to go. There are underserved countries where a child is not gonna make it past the age of five because he was born with HIV and developed AIDS. There's a mom that's gonna go to bed crying tonight because this is the second time in a week that she hasn't been able to put food on her family's table and I think that makes us wonder like is is God that good or are these people not trusting God the way that they should but I wonder do they need to trust God more or do they need us to trust God more?

I think this passage is encouragement from our teacher and our rabbi Jesus to trust God enough to lean into the callings that have been given to us by God for this world. This is not a message for people who are in therapy twice a week, this is a message to the called who are too anxious about their stuff to let it go and to be the people that God needs them to be in the world.

And so there are certainly people in this room that I'm talking to today because I know that you felt God pushing on you to take a step of faith and you've sensed God calling you into something that could potentially cost you something of value and so it's stressing you out because this is something that you can't do yet but you're passionate about it and you'll talk to anybody who will listen. You want to see change in this area but there is safety with where you are and with what you have, and in that space Jesus says do not worry. And you can take Jesus's words to the bank on that one because even creation, as our text says, God provides creation with what it needs to live out its purpose Jesus tells them look at the birds and the flowers. I think if Jesus was born in Minnesota he'd have probably said look at the mosquitoes and the squirrels I've never seen so many squirrels in my life [laughter ] It's true.

But Jesus is using common imagery to make a point about provision in their life and he says look at the birds like they're they don't have to farm and plow and store grain and silos and look at these lilies in these wildflowers they're not knitting sweaters like that's silly like God is providing and caring for them with what they need and as God's most prized creation we can do the exact same thing.

And so this morning I wonder what is God calling each of us to how are we being called into a deeper purpose in our lives and are we in a place spiritually where we can take a step of faith or is stress and anxiety around our stuff and our safety and what we have is that crippling us and freezing us in place and making us incapable of taking that step that God is calling us to I want us to think about that and as we think about that and process that there are three things that I want to give you to think through, some questions to ask, and then one step that I want you to take this week.

And so the first thing that I think we need to do is evaluate our loyalty that's what Jesus is getting at when he says that we can't serve both God and money. And in this particular instance worry certainly can manifest itself as a symptom of our lack of trust in God because we've chosen to trust in the security and the happiness of our banking accounts rather than the provisions of God. And so I think it's really important for us to ask ourselves why am I worried like what am I so worried about? Like is there something that God is convicting you to do with your life and do you trust that God is going to provide for you in order to make it happen?

And if you don't it's better to know that than to not have even asked the question at all, right? At least that gives you a foundation and a place to start to maybe begin looking at the decisions you're making with a fresh set of eyes. Ao why am I worried? And evaluating where our loyalties are are a really important first step for us to be able to take.

The second thing that I think we should do is align our values. I have read the Sermon on the Mount tons of times but as we've gone through this series together I've really noticed some things about me that I'm like wow that doesn't really align with the values of God's kingdom. Like I I don't want to turn the other cheek I guess especially when I'm driving like I I do have a little bit of road rage. I probably should talk to someone about it. There's just something comes over me at a four-way stop when everyone acts like it's their first day on planet earth. And I'm like I like I don't know what's going on here. A few years ago actually the church that I was serving at got car magnets for like a marketing strategy that we were gonna do. And so I put that stick that magnet on my car and I thought about it and I was like I can't have a road rage with this first Baptist Church magnet on my car and so I took the magnet off. [laugher] No I'm just kidding.

But but truly when I was thinking about this series in all of the values and the practices that we've learned so far in this series I'm really seeing that that my heart isn't always aligned with the kingdom and I know that some of you have felt that exact same way. And that necessarily plays itself into the values that we have and the actions that we take as people.

And so when we've evaluated our loyalties and we get to a place where we've decided that we want to grow deeper in our spiritual walk and align ourselves with God then we can move into alignment with the values that Jesus teaches us and these impact the way that we are going to live out our lives every single day. And so we need to ask ourselves how can the values of God's kingdom speak into my obedience.

Third, I think we need to acknowledge our calling. I think that sometimes we hear don't worry and we take that to mean stop caring and I don't think that could be further from what Jesus meant. I don't think that Jesus wanted us to stop caring I think he wanted us to start focusing on God's will being done on earth as it is in heaven. And that is going to look different for every single one of us.

You know being in ministry has given me such an appreciation for how people are skilled and passionate about different things. Like I am horrible at math. Like if you ever go to a restaurant with me like just just watch me try to leave a tip. It's it's bad. you'll see me over there [counts on fingers] 22, 23, like I can't do it. And so it amazes me to see people like Shane and Sara our treasurer and our vice treasurer do what they do and be so good at it because I am not.

And I love that a lot of people are passionate about things that I'm not passionate about. A few years ago I had the opportunity to launch a ministry for adults with intellectual and developmental needs and that really landed in my life it wasn't something that I sought out like it came to me and there were people in our congregation that jumped all over this ministry. There was one guy named Mark who his son Christopher was in a wheelchair and he's older than me but I think he operated on about a second grade comprehension level. And so when Mark found out that we were doing this ministry he jumped all over it. He was so passionate about it. And there were other people in the congregation that just took this ministry and they ran with it.

God is calling all of us to something and what that something is is going to align with the values of the kingdom of God and it's gonna push us. It is going to push us to trust God more than we ever have before, but God hasn't given us skills and passions just for our own benefit. They are all to make this world new making all things new like we've talked about the past few weeks. And so we are all meant to play a role in that and so I think it's important for us to ask ourselves this question: based on my gifts and passions, what might God be calling me into?

And finally I think that we have to take a step today. Take a step today. Jesus tells us that tomorrow is gonna come with its own worries and its own problems so we need to focus on the worries of today. And so I wonder what's got you anxious lately, about living into your calling? What is holding you back from taking a step of faith? As we think about that this week I encourage you to take a step of faith and don't wait on it. I encourage you to take it today.

That doesn't necessarily mean that you need to go home right now and put your house on the market and move to Cambodia, but it could be something really simple. Maybe you have a God-sized dream that you've been too nervous or anxious about to speak before and so you go home and you share that with your husband or your wife. Or maybe you felt God pushing you to start a ministry in the city for an underserved population and so today you go home and you make a call to someone in another city who's doing that work. And you just listen today to how that ministry started and and how they're processing and what they're doing. Or maybe you're someone who would say you know what I I'm living this out right now and I'm in a place where I'm trusting God more deeply than I ever have in my life and I am stepping into my calling right now and I would say that if that's you like would you please take a moment this afternoon to pray for the rest of us who may be dealing and grappling with anxiety and not able to take that step yet?

The birds and the flowers and even the mosquitoes and the squirrels are out there right now living into their purpose they are being exactly who God called them to be and I know and you know that if they can do it then we can too. Amen.