Sermon Tone Analysis

And He said to His disciples, “For this reason I say to you, do not worry about your life, as to what you will eat; nor for your body, as to what you will put on.

For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.

Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap; they have no storeroom nor barn, and yet God feeds them; how much more valuable you are than the birds!

“And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life’s span?

If then you cannot do even a very little thing, why do you worry about other matters?

“Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; but I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these.

But if God so clothes the grass in the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, how much more will He clothe you?

You men of little faith!

“And do not seek what you will eat and what you will drink, and do not keep worrying.

For all these things the nations of the world eagerly seek; but your Father knows that you need these things.

But seek His kingdom, and these things will be added to you.

Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has chosen gladly to give you the kingdom.”



Introduction

I want you to picture with me two kids, maybe eight years old.

These two kids are best friends, but there’s one distinct difference between the two.

One of them is an orphan.

Now, this may sound strange, but I’ll ask you to bear with me and try to follow my thought here... if the one friend who has parents behaved like his orphan friend--in other words, if both kids acted like orphans-- would the true orphan wish he had parents?

I’m going to come back around to this idea, but for now please keep it in the back of your mind.

This message is from Luke 12:22-32, and I’ve titled it, “The Command Unto Liberation,” because here Jesus issues a command not to worry, but as we’ll see, this is not a command to simply quit doing something He dislikes; but a command to stop doing something that we have been freed from the need to do, and because we have been given so much in Christ, to worry over daily living is to diminish in our minds the sufficiency of Christ.

Financial problems are up at the top of the list for many of us students.

For many it’s never certain if tuition or rent money are going to be there for next month.

You don’t know where the money’s going to come from and you don’t know if there will be enough, and all anybody tells you in comfort is, “Just have faith; God will provide.”

Now, as much as this may be true, the distance between those words and a real experience of freedom from worry is enormous and hard to bridge.

As I said, this command is not a command to just quit doing something because Jesus doesn’t like it.

God’s commands are never arbitrary.

They are always realistic.

In this passage Jesus teaches us what the true nature of worry is, and, rather than teach us how to not worry, He teaches us how if we are God’s people, if we are born-again followers of Christ, we have already been set free from worry.

Context.

The middle section of Luke’s Gospel, sometimes referred to as Luke’s travel narrative, combines the different trips Jesus made to Jerusalem into one major journey, with the cross as the final destination.

The different teaching discourses recorded in this section are primarily geared toward preparing His disciples for His crucifixion and the coming of His kingdom.

At the end of chapter 11 Jesus is having it out with the Pharisees over their hypocrisy, which He warns His disciples about in the beginning of chapter 12.

In keeping with His main focus of preparation for the Kingdom Jesus uses the hypocrisy of the Pharisees to prepare His disciples for coming persecution, by encouraging them to boldly proclaim Him in persecution rather than concealing their faith.

At this point Jesus is speaking to His disciples while being surrounded by an enormous crowd, and someone from the crowd asks Jesus to help him settle a family dispute over an inheritance, which Jesus refuses to do, opting instead to launch into this long discourse, still directed to the disciples.

The second part this discourse is passage for this message.

In the first half of the discourse Jesus addresses greed, saying to store up treasure in heaven rather than on earth, and then beginning in verse 22 he addresses worry or anxiety over basic daily needs.

Greed and worry are just different manifestations of the same problem: material preoccupation.

I am borrowing this term from R. Kent Hughes, who says that “worry is the emotional reward of material preoccupation.”

Material preoccupation is when people revolve their daily lives around their material needs.

Material things are ultimately not ours, and material preoccupation is when we act like they are.

This is when there is more focus and attention put on earning an income to pay our rent and our tuition than on being Christ-like in our homes, in our school, and our jobs.

I. Beginning in verse 22, Jesus says For this reason I say to you, do not worry about your life, as to what you will eat; nor for your body, as to what you will put on.

For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.

When He says, “For this reason,” he means the principle that underlies both the current and previous passage, which dealt with greed.

From Jesus’ perspective, both issues of greed and anxiety over daily needs are answered by the same principle, which He states back in verse 15. “For not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions.”

If God is the ultimate source of life, and sin breaks fellowship with God, then a sinful man is dead before God.

So, if life and death are not determined by the state of the body, and are not constituted by that which affects the body, then life does not consist of any physical or material thing, only spiritual.

It’s like a battery: when the battery is dead the shell is there but the power is gone.

The life of the battery is not made up of the shell and the label.

The life of the battery consists of the power that should be in it, and even when the power is there, its power was put there by an outside source.

When a man comes to life before God, having been atoned for by the blood of Christ and conformed to His resurrection, he has life, but his life consists only of Christ’s life.

A man’s life cannot consist of possessions when his life is not his own.

So, to paraphrase this verse, what Jesus is saying is, “Rather than worrying and seeking after that which life does not consist of, be concerned and seek after that which life does consist of,” which, in short, is Christ and His kingdom.

II.

In verses 24 through 28 Jesus gives us three examples from nature to show us just how well He cares for all His creation, and how much more He cares for His own people by comparison.

Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap; they have no storeroom nor barn, and yet God feeds them; how much more valuable you are than the birds!

Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; but I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these.

But if God so clothes the grass in the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace, how much more will He clothe you?

You men of little faith!

The ravens don’t store up food for themselves, yet they’re fed; the flowers don’t work to spin fabric for their own garments, yet their clothed; and the grass has an insignificant lifespan, being used in the ancient world to heat ovens.

We could analyze the metaphors here all day long, but the main point is that God cares for His creation regardless of how we view their significance or contribution to the world.

God cares and provides for His creation simply because they’re His, but not only does He care for them, but He cares for them to a much higher degree than we could ever care for ourselves, even with unlimited resources.

The comparison to Solomon in verse 28 is significant, because he was the richest king in history, but as Jesus points out, was not able to clothe himself as well as God clothes the lilies.

A modern version of this concept would say that Bill Gates cannot clothe himself as well as God clothes grass and flowers, and he can’t feed himself as well as the birds are fed.

That being said, the main point overall, is that if God cares so much for the birds and the flowers and the grass...how much better will He provide for us?

There’s something else significant in the text here.

What makes the provisions for nature so much greater than what people can provide for themselves is that God’s provisions for nature are bestowed because nature cannot provide for itself.

Nothing can compare with what God provides to those who are unable to do for themselves.

These are provisions of grace.

God doesn’t need anything that He’s created, so by definition, everything that God has created needs Him, so what God provides for whomever cannot provide for themselves is deserving of a great deal of attention.

I’m speaking primarily of our salvation.

This is the same concept we see in Genesis 3 in Adam and Eve’s fig leaves and the skin tunics God made for them.

The fig leaves wither, die, wear out and eventually fall off, but the covering provided by God lasts and does not wear out or fade away.

The end of verse 28 is an exclamation that shows us just how God views anxiety over material needs.

The plain, ugly reality of worry and anxiety is that it is a lack of faith.

To worry is to show by our behavior that we do not believe in God’s love, God’s care and His provision for our lives.

To worry is to demonstrate our belief that we, who are created in the image of God, are no more valuable than animals.

When we worry we show God and the rest of the world our unbelief.

III.

Verses 25 and 26 contain a very simple, very practical reason to not worry.

Very simply put, worry is ineffective.

I know that seems like a no-brainer, but this is a big issue for a lot of people.

And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life’s span?

If then you cannot do even a very little thing, why do you worry about other matters?

So much of the time when we come across circumstances outside of our control we get nervous and we mentally hold onto things as if somehow by our thinking we can affect the outcome.

Our tendency is to act like if we don’t constantly think about it then somehow we’re irresponsible or that the outcome will automatically be the worst possible outcome if we don’t tightly uphold the situation in our thoughts.

I think it’s human nature, but whatever is a natural human tendency is probably the opposite of God’s will.

So, if a situation is outside of our control, we have to acknowledge whose control it is under.

Rather than worrying about something that’s outside our control we should instead acknowledge God’s control and rejoice in the fact that the outcome is not our responsibility.

If the responsibility of the outcome is not ours, then why worry about it?

We only make ourselves miserable by doing that.

And rather than adding time to our lives by worrying, we will probably end up shortening them.

God really doesn’t want us to be stressed out, but we stress ourselves out by worrying about things we cannot change.

IV.

The next two sets of verses, 29 and 30, and 31 and 32 contain negative command and a positive command, each with an explanation of why.

And do not seek what you will eat and what you will drink, and do not keep worrying.

Jesus is not suggesting a lower priority for material needs; He’s saying they shouldn’t be a priority.

Don’t seek them, and do not worry about them.

This word for “worry” is only used this one time in the New Testament, and one commentator has defined it as “Hovering between hope and fear, between heaven and earth.”

If the object of our faith is solid and reliable, then our faith will be solid and reliable, so if we hover between hope and fear, then we need to re-examine the object of our faith.

Do we have faith in an all-powerful, faithful God, or do we just have faith in faith.