Sermon Tone Analysis

Date: July 12, 2015

*Intro* – Need a cure for anxiety?

Maybe the Psychiatric Hotline will help.

Their message goes something like this: “Welcome to the Psychiatric Hotline.

If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1 repeatedly.

If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2. If you have multiple personalities, please press 3, 4, 5, and 6.

If you are paranoid-delusional, we know who you are and what you want.

Just stay on the line so we can trace the call.

If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a little voice will tell you which number to press.

If you are depressed, it doesn’t matter which number you press.

No one will answer.”

I think most of us have felt that way at some point in time.

We’ve placed a call for help but no one is listening.

Anxiety builds.

Well, Jesus has a response to anxiety.

It’s not at all the answer you would expect.

His answer is in Lu 12:31, “Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you.”

Worry diminishes God.

Faith enlarges God in my life and crowds worry right out of the room.

So Jesus’ answer to worry is, “Get over yourself, and get on with God’s agenda.”

When we do that, little by little, anxiety has to leave the building.

But when we let anxiety reign, bad things happen.

Jesus cites 7 to help encourage us to change our outlook.

*I.

Destroys God’s Peace (22, 29, 32)* – V. 22 says, “Do not be anxious about your life.”

The word “anxious” means divided, distracted, or fractured.

It pictures someone whose mind is taking off in all directions, lacking focus and thus worried about everything.

Jesus is saying, “Get focused in one place.

Leave the worry to the Lordship of Christ.”

*II.

Defies God’s Perspective (23)* – God’s view is v. 23, “For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.”

That truth underscores this whole section.

Life is more than what you see, hear, smell, taste and feel.

If it were not, survival would be the name of the game.

But in God’s forever universe, physical survival ranks way below being prepared for God’s kingdom.

Seek that, and the rest will take care of itself.

*III.Devalues God’s Provisions (24, 27-28)*

Worry not only diminishes God’s person, it devalues God’s provisions.

Worry says, “What God has given me is not enough, and I don’t trust Him for what I need, so I’ll worry about it.”

It sounds stupid when you say it that way because it is stupid.

If God’s promises are true, then worry is a waste of time at best and an insult to God at worst.

That’s Jesus’ point in these verses.

His command in v. 22 is “do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on.”

So, work for what you will eat and what you will wear, but don’t worry about them.

Don’t let those become the focus of your existence.

That’s the command.

Jesus gives two examples.

V. 24 concerns food: “Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them.

Of how much more value are you than the birds!”

Jesus chooses the most despised of unclean birds for His illustration – the raven.

Despised by man, declared unclean by God, and yet – with no means whatsoever to provide for themselves, God feeds them.

So why would you who are the apple of His eye worry.

Certainly you must work.

As the bird must hunt, you must work, but trust the Father rather than worry about what you do and don’t have.

If He feeds the despised raven, He will surely feed you.

Jesus is really asking here, “Who do you think keeps all of this going?

Why do you think you can help yourself by worry?”

That’s the general state of things.

Certainly there are times when in God’s providence drought comes, birds die of starvation and so do people – even believing people.

Does that mean He has failed of His promise?

May it never be, Beloved.

It simply means that for some greater kingdom good God has seen fit dry up the resources.

Because life is more than food.

Rom 8:35: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine?”

To meet His greater ends, God may withhold food.

But even that can’t separate us from His love.

A little poem makes the point: Said the Robin to the Sparrow,/ “I should really like to know / Why these anxious human beings / Rush about and worry so.” / Said the Sparrow to the Robin, / “Friend, I think that it must be / They have no Heavenly Father, / Such as cares for you and me.

Worry devalues what God provides.

Vv 27-28 makes the same point regarding clothing: “Consider the lilies, 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.

28But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith!”

Once again, Jesus’ point is that God not only clothes the flowers with great beauty – He even clothes the grass that has a short existence and then becomes fuel.

How much more will He care for His eternal beings!? So, don’t worry!

The question isn’t do I have all the food I want and the latest in fashion?

The question, do I have enough food and clothing to fulfill my mission?

That’s the question.

What do the ravens and the lilies and the grass have in common?

They are all doing His will.

They are all doing what they were made for.

They’re fulfilling their life’s mission, however lowly.

They, of course, have no choice.

We do.

And what Jesus is urging is – do like them.

Fulfill God’s purpose for your life rather than your own; He’ll take care of the rest.

Put His will first and He’ll make sure you have all you need and more.

It may not look like you think.

It may not be caviar and oysters Rockefeller.

But you’ll have all that God intends for your best good and for His glory.

It may not be designer jeans and Gucci purses – but it will be what you need.

Let Him do the worrying.

You’ll be amazed how when His agenda becomes yours, some of the things you thought most necessary drop off the list altogether.

Seek His kingdom first.

That’s the principle.

So, do I have the food and clothing necessary to seek His kingdom – to fulfill His intention for my life?

That’s the issue.

Let me show you what happens when we get anxious about the wrong things, Beloved.

Turn to I Kings.

This is King Solomon’s story, and it follows a typical Hebrew literary structure (a chiastic pattern) that bookends beginning and end and builds to a climax in the middle.

So, in I Kings 1 Solomon inherits the kingdom from his father David.

At the corresponding end to the section in chapter 12 a majority portion of the kingdom is taken from Solomon’s heir, Rehoboam, by Jeroboam.