OVERCOMING ANXIETY
Matthew 6:25-33
Part I: What is Anxiety?
Matthew 6:25-33
Part I: What is Anxiety?
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SERMON SUMMARY
You do not have to struggle with anxiety. The Bible provides the keys you need to be delivered from the bondage of it. The first step is simply understanding what anxiety is from a Biblical perspective. |
Message begins at approx. the 36 min mark.
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Scripture Introduction:
Good morning! I invite you to open your bibles and turn with me to Matthew 6. This morning we come to the last section of the chapter. This one went much faster than chapter 5, didn’t it?
But we are going to be examining verses 25-34 this morning. It is one of those passages that deals with the ever growing issue of worry.
Worry is a universal problem. We all experience it from time to time. In that sense we might say that it is a pandemic. But we also recognize that anxiety issues are becoming more and more prolific in our day and age. I don’t know if you still trust any statistics coming out of the CDC. You certainly have every right to question them. But the CDC reports that in the last quarter of 2020 the “national anxiety severity score” increased 13%. (I have no doubt that the CDC was much to blame for that increase).
If that were not bad enough, another source reports that 41 percent of those whom they surveyed indicated that they were more anxious in 2021 than they were in 2020.
Now, I don’t want to make too much out of statistics or dwell on all the gloom and doom that is out there. It’s enough to simply say that anxiety issues are quite prevalent. And I don’t doubt that the words that Jesus offers are more than relevant to our contemporary society.
I might guess that there might be many here in our midst who would gain great benefit from what Jesus has to say on this subject.
And knowing that the Lord Jesus Christ does have the solution to our every problem in life, let’s then give our attention to his holy and inspired word.
Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
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? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. 34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Introduction
As we come to our passage today, I don’t know that I need to do anything catchy to draw you into the text. I would assume that my saying that we are dealing with the issue of anxiety has already drawn the attention of various people.
What I want to do then is simply to lay out for you what I intend to cover regarding the subject. I want to provide you with a road map so that you who need help in this area are able to capture as much information as you can.
I believe that our passage answers three basic questions about anxiety. And when I say basic questions, I mean the questions themselves are not complicated. And even though the questions are not complicated, they are certainly comprehensive in dealing with this issue. I do not want you to think that we are merely sweeping over this problem and only looking at the “basics” in any superficial or unhelpful way.
The three questions are quite basic, but comprehensive. And you can be assured that gaining an understanding of these questions will set you on the road to relief.
The very first question we need to ask is this: “What is worry?” We need to begin by defining it and understanding what it actually is. I would suspect that many people who have anxiety issues have never really ever thought about the nature of worry. And, as I hope to show, if we understand what anxiety really is--and how it ought to be defined, we will be 3/4ths of the way to overcoming it.
The second question we will examine is “Why should we not worry?” After we look at what it is, we are going to spend a good deal of time thinking about why it is completely out of line. In this passage Jesus gives us several reasons why we ought not to worry. And I hope, by the time we finish walking through this passage, you will say that there is really no reason for me to be anxious at all.
What I’m saying is that Jesus is going to give us all the information we need in order to overcome anxiety and experience the peace we are seeking.
Then the third and last question we will deal with is this: how we can prevent ourselves from becoming anxious? Jesus doesn’t just tell us what it is and how we can cure it. He tells us how we can prevent it.
You hear people today talk about “preventative medicine.” Most of the time you go to the doctor in order to get healed. It is after the problem has come that you get treatment. But many people today are talking about how to prevent yourself from every having to have the problem in the first place.
And that’s what we find here. There are steps you can take to solve it if you have it. But there are also things you can do to prevent yourself from having to deal with it in the first place.
And those of you who deal with anxiety issues, I hope this is good news to you. Jesus has provided here not only a way for you to escape this bondage you find yourself in, but he also provides some sure fire means by which you can remain steadfast in a life of peace.
Now, just to clarify, we are not going to be able to deal with all of these questions today. I suspect that we are just going to deal with the first question and a little bit of the second. My goal is not to cram everything into one sermon. The issue is such that we need to take our time working through it. The last thing we need is someone becoming anxious because they are experiencing information overload.
So we are going to break things up a little bit. And so, let’s begin with a simple question: what is worry?
I. What is worry?
One of the ways we can define anxiety is by way of its symptoms.
It’s basic symptoms
If you would google anxiety you will likely be pointed to a medical site which, at the very outset, would give you some of the physical signs of worry. Perhaps the most common symptom is tension. By that I mean a simple tightening of one’s muscles, often in the neck and shoulders. And this tension can lead to particular problems, such as back pain and headaches. Some of the more severe forms of it can be shortness of breath or a tightness in the throat.
When people get worried there is often be an increased pulse rate too. Sometimes there are heart palpitations. Sometimes it leads to sweating, restlessness, and insomnia. Some people have it so bad that it leads to great amounts of fatigue and possibly even digestive issues.
Of course, those who have severe anxiety issues can have panic attacks which have rather intensified expressions of many of these things. It can leave them feeling completely paralyzed.
And some of you are probably feeling tense just because I’m talking about this. You’re getting worried because you know all to well what it feels like to be worried.
All of this is, of course, understandable. When you get worried, your body will naturally react by getting itself worked up. Not only is there the emotional discomfort of the anxiety, but it has physical ramifications.
But those are some of the more common symptoms of anxiety. And there is a sense in which you can define anxiety by its physical manifestations.
However, that’s not by any means getting at the nature of the problem. Again, those are just symptoms. What I want to do is develop a better understanding of worry; one that goes beyond mere symptoms (what it looks like) to understanding what it really is.
The world's basic definition
If you would go to just an ordinary English dictionary you might find something like this: “A mental distress or agitation resulting from concern usually for something impending or anticipated.” Notice the emphasis there though. It is a mental distress. It’s something that supposedly happens in your brain.
Now, there’s a bit of a problem with that. Anxiety is not a brain problem. I know it is popular to talk about anxiety as a mental disorder or a mental problem, but what it important for us to understand is that isn’t true. People think it is a mental problem because we live in a culture that says man is merely a physical creature with no soul.
Do you understand what I’m saying? Most of the so called “professional world” are made up of humanists who believe we have evolved from monkeys. They do not believe that God created us, and they certainly do not believe that God imbued us with a living soul. We are just bodies to them. We are just chemicals and matter in motion.
As a result, they have to find an origin for this problem. And what is the natural thing for them to do? They blame it on the brain. And if you have a serious problem with anxiety, they will give some medical lingo to it. You will have what they call “chronic anxiety” or an “anxiety disorder.” But it all comes back to their belief that something is wrong with your head.
But that’s not how we ought to define worry and anxiety. We know that man is more than his material body. We have a spiritual component. And we should think of this as a problem, not of the mind or the brain, but of the soul.
That’s why Jesus can speak to it and give the answers needed to be delivered from it. It doesn’t take a doctor or a psychologist, it takes a Savior. That’s because it is a spiritual and moral issue.
Which leads us to the second thing we can say about what worry is.
A general Biblical definition
The Bible would define it somewhat differently. The Bible would, first and foremost, define it as sin.
Now I know that often doesn’t sit with people very well. There are many people in our world today, and perhaps even some in our midst, who would take great offense at such a claim. They would be applauded that someone like me would try to define anxiety as a transgression against God. They would rather define it as an emotional problem or even a physical problem, not a spiritual one. And they would be aghast to think that someone would come down on a person with this judgmental or overly harsh way of thinking about this problem.
But it is true. Worry is not merely an issue of one’s emotions. It is, before that, a spiritual issue; it goes much deeper than one’s emotions. Worry or anxiety is a transgression against God. It is a sin because, by worry, we fail to put our trust in His all wise plan and rely upon His all powerful provision.
While it does affect the emotions (and may be certainly be characterized as an emotion), we must understand that it is a sinful emotion. It’s not an emotion that God permits. And this is abundantly clear from our text. Jesus says at least three times “Do not worry” or “Do not be anxious.”
And to do something that God expressly forbids is the very definition of sin.
But what I hope you understand is that labeling it a sin should be seen as a very good thing. It is much more helpful than labeling it as a disorder or a chronic illness or merely an emotional problem. Because issues of sin can be rectified. Jesus Christ came into the world to bring us redemption. He provides us with what we need to over come sin and be rid of it.
And that means that anxiety can be something that we are saved from. There’s hope when we look at it like this because it means that there is a way to be released from the bondage of it.
When we look at it in medical terms and see it as a disorder or an illness, then we are doing ourselves a great injustice. It might sound nicer, but there’s a real problem with it: There are no cures. If you take this approach and look at it through the lens of the medical or contemporary psychology, you are trapping yourself in a world of hurt. Because no one can help you.
The best you can do is take a pill and maybe get some tips on coping strategies. Maybe they will tell you to breath into a bag or try to relax. Maybe they will tell you to “decatastrophize” or just try to think better thoughts. But ultimately they have no real remedies they can offer.
So the first thing we must do is define it in a Scriptural way. We must recognize it as a spiritual issue and place it properly in the general category we call sin.
But there’s more here in our passage that helps us understand the nature of anxiety. I want us to think specifically about the word that Jesus uses. The Greek word for anxiety gives us a little more clarification as to what worry is.
A Specific Biblical Definition: division
The word that is used here in this passage is the word merimnaō. And word literally means “to divide or to cut into pieces.” Another way to take it is “to be distracted.”
I believe that is helpful because it is showing you the reality behind worry. You become anxious because your thoughts are divided. Emotionally, you feel that you are cut into pieces because your mind is no longer singular in its focus. Your thought life is fragmented, so to speak. And it is thinking of things that it ought not to be thinking about.
Think of it this way: Instead of focusing on the nature of God and his present calling on your life, your mind gets cluttered with lots of other things. You are distracted by this bill or this scenario. Instead of thinking about who God is and what is, you are finding yourself becoming all up tight over what might be (i.e. “what if...?”).
When it comes to your financial standing or your material goods, this makes sense based on what Jesus has just said: Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Do you see the division? Instead of being focused on your Father who is in heaven and all the glorious things that you can do in this world to create heavenly treasure, your mind is cluttered too much with the things of this world.
That’s why your heart is racing. That’s why you have emotional turmoil. You have become divided in your thoughts and (ultimately) your heart has been derailed from what is to be its real focus.
Let’s just be realistic. If your life is caught up in the things of this world and all the material goods, you’ll never have peace. You'll always be thinking about what you can get and how you can keep it. Or, your mind will be focused on what you don't have and how you can get it. And maybe, you'll be one of those people who is thinking about what other people are thinking about you because you do or don't have it. It’s just not possible to have peace if the material world is your focus.
But if your treasure is in heaven, then it doesn’t matter what happens to you. You will have a peace that surpasses all understanding because you are focused on the greater realities that transcend this world.
Listen to these words from Isaiah 26:3, “You keep him in perfect peace who’s mind is stayed upon Jehovah.”
What is Isaiah saying here? He’s talking about the singular mind; a mind that is not distracted. His mind is ‘stayed upon Jehovah.” What happens to him as a result of his being tuned in to the truth as God has revealed it? He is experiencing perfect peace. It's not a partial peace. It's not a peace that comes and goes. It is a perfect peace. He has an all pervading, all consuming peace because there’s nothing intruding upon his thought life. His heart has a singular focus and his mind has a perfect peace.
That’s the first and only real cure for anxiety. The problem is that your heart has experienced a fracture; your mind fragments and becomes divided. What happens is that the Lord gets pushed out because you’ve allowed all these other troublesome thoughts to come and crowd him out. That distraction is what is making you worried.
So what you need to do is to get your mind back on track.
That means that you first need to repent of having let yourself be cut into pieces. You need to get your heart right with God and ask him to forgive you for letting these other things take your attention.
So you should say, “Lord, I’ve been distracted. I have not loved you with all my heart and mind. I’ve let myself become all caught up in this world and have not let my mind be guided by the truth of your Word. Please forgive me for that.”
And once you do that, you need to start getting your heart and mind in order. You need to put in mind the things of the Lord and let your mind be stayed upon him. Thus, you will drive out the anxious thoughts by putting more righteous thoughts into your mind.
A few years ago I had opportunity to counsel a lady. My wife and I paid a visit to her at her house. When we arrived you could not only sense the tension, but you could physically see it. She sat on the edge of her chair nervously rocking back and forth. The intensity of her movements jostled the baby she held, so much so that he looked like he was on a roller coaster.
I sat down beside her and opened up the Scriptures. I began to read some sections and expound what each said about the Lord. As this woman began focusing in on each passage, a peace began to come over her. Her tension began to ease, her rocking back and forth subsided, and the baby she held fell fast asleep.
There’s no doubt that this woman had quite a way to go. She had created a deep rooted habit of anxiety. Her heart would still struggle with that division and there would be much work that would still need to be done to gain mastery in a singular thought life. But it was evident there that evening that when the heart does become singular--focusing its attention on the revealed truth of God, one experiences the peace God promises.
This, of course, leads us to ask what we must focus our attention on? I mentioned at the outset that Jesus not only tells us what anxiety is, but he tells us why we should not be worried. In sum, if we listen to his arguments on why we should not be worried, we'll be getting the right perspective. Our hearts and our minds will be dialed in to God and to reality as he has created it. To put it another way, Jesus helps us get our minds back on track by giving us an understanding of what we should be thinking about so we won't have a divided mind.
Now, we won’t have time to mention everything, but I would like to mention at least the first item.
II. Why we shouldn’t be worried
A. Because of how important our very existence is [25]
Look at verse 25. Jesus says, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”
What Jesus is doing here is arguing from the greater to the lesser. Think of it this way, which is more important: The body or the clothes that you put on the body? If you were to size them up, which would have more significance: your life, or the food that supports your life?
Now, we know you can’t have life without food and your body needs to be clothed. But Jesus wants us to distinguish between the two. And he wants us to put these things in the balance and weigh them. And the conclusion is this: God values your life. And if he values it, won’t he provide for it?
Think of it this way: We are not the products of evolutionary happen-chance. We are not accidents that came about because something just happened to bump into something else. We exist because of God. We are the direct product of His will and creation. The Lord, in his sovereign might, knit us together.
And since He has given us this tremendous blessing of life, is there any question that he will sustain it? Will he not give us the food we need to support that life?
Think also of our bodies. Don’t just think about the clothes that you put on. That’s so much of what our life revolves around. It’s probably what we think about more. But we need to think about the first principle. Not just the clothes, but the actual body. Have you ever taken time to think about the nature of your physical make up and where your body came from?
That’s what Jesus is saying that we must do. Our bodies are ever so important. These fingers and toes and everything about your body is a result of God’s unique handiwork.
There are a lot of people who would like to say that your body is merely the product of natural processes. Whether they say that you evolved from some primordial slime or simply the natural combination of sperm and an egg.
But if that’s the case, you have everything to worry about. Because you are just on your own. Life came together as an accident, and there is no guarantee you’ll be able to obtain any clothes for yourself. Life is unpredictable and nothing is really guaranteed.
Thankfully, that is not the way the world really operates. Humans are not products of evolution, and our bodies are not merely the outcome of natural processes. Our bodies are special creations of God. Each one of us was willed into existence. More importantly, our bodies bear God’s image.
That gives the body real value doesn’t it? It’s not only valuable to us, but it is valuable to God who is its creator and who’s image it bears.
And if that is the case, if God assigns that kind of importance to your body, will he not then see to it that it is clothed? Isn’t that the direct conclusion we must come to? We have a real guarantee that we shall have our needs provided for because God assigns so much value to us.
In order to convince us that we do not need to worry, Jesus gives us a godly perspective on things. He makes us go back to the very first principle. He makes us look past the daily provisions to the very importance of life itself.
And if we think about how life is more than food and the body more than clothing, then we will see that we have no reason for concern when it comes to such things.
Conclusion:
So let’s take an extreme example. Let’s say that when you get home today you find that there is nothing in the crock pot. As a matter of fact, the kitchen looks like it has been completely ransacked. All the cupboards are open and completely bare. It just so happened that a bunch of bears and raccoons burst into your house and devoured everything. They had such a feast that there is nothing left.
But what’s worse, there’s a message on your answering machine. Your boss had called while you were at worship and said that you shouldn’t come in tomorrow morning. They’ve had to make cuts and they’ve determined that your position is no longer viable under the new system that they are implementing. So, not only do you have no food in the house, but you have no income to purchase any more.
Now you could begin to get tense. You could look around at the mess before you and begin to become anxious about how everything is going to pan out. Your heart rate could increase and the neck and shoulders could start to become stiff as you wonder how now are you going to put food on the table and take care of the rest of the bills.
Or, you could remember what we’ve just talked about. All that is left in this room is simply a testimony of the goodness of God. He has valued your life so much that he put all these things in your care. And being that he continues to place a high value on your personage, you can rest assured that he will go out of his way to tend to your present needs. These bears may have robbed your refrigerator of its contents, but they have not robbed you of your significance. So surely you can trust that he will put in your possession all that you and your family will need.
As your mind has that singular focus, you no doubt will find that there is a peace that pervades your soul, even though there may be a mess all about you.
Good morning! I invite you to open your bibles and turn with me to Matthew 6. This morning we come to the last section of the chapter. This one went much faster than chapter 5, didn’t it?
But we are going to be examining verses 25-34 this morning. It is one of those passages that deals with the ever growing issue of worry.
Worry is a universal problem. We all experience it from time to time. In that sense we might say that it is a pandemic. But we also recognize that anxiety issues are becoming more and more prolific in our day and age. I don’t know if you still trust any statistics coming out of the CDC. You certainly have every right to question them. But the CDC reports that in the last quarter of 2020 the “national anxiety severity score” increased 13%. (I have no doubt that the CDC was much to blame for that increase).
If that were not bad enough, another source reports that 41 percent of those whom they surveyed indicated that they were more anxious in 2021 than they were in 2020.
Now, I don’t want to make too much out of statistics or dwell on all the gloom and doom that is out there. It’s enough to simply say that anxiety issues are quite prevalent. And I don’t doubt that the words that Jesus offers are more than relevant to our contemporary society.
I might guess that there might be many here in our midst who would gain great benefit from what Jesus has to say on this subject.
And knowing that the Lord Jesus Christ does have the solution to our every problem in life, let’s then give our attention to his holy and inspired word.
Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
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? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. 34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Introduction
As we come to our passage today, I don’t know that I need to do anything catchy to draw you into the text. I would assume that my saying that we are dealing with the issue of anxiety has already drawn the attention of various people.
What I want to do then is simply to lay out for you what I intend to cover regarding the subject. I want to provide you with a road map so that you who need help in this area are able to capture as much information as you can.
I believe that our passage answers three basic questions about anxiety. And when I say basic questions, I mean the questions themselves are not complicated. And even though the questions are not complicated, they are certainly comprehensive in dealing with this issue. I do not want you to think that we are merely sweeping over this problem and only looking at the “basics” in any superficial or unhelpful way.
The three questions are quite basic, but comprehensive. And you can be assured that gaining an understanding of these questions will set you on the road to relief.
The very first question we need to ask is this: “What is worry?” We need to begin by defining it and understanding what it actually is. I would suspect that many people who have anxiety issues have never really ever thought about the nature of worry. And, as I hope to show, if we understand what anxiety really is--and how it ought to be defined, we will be 3/4ths of the way to overcoming it.
The second question we will examine is “Why should we not worry?” After we look at what it is, we are going to spend a good deal of time thinking about why it is completely out of line. In this passage Jesus gives us several reasons why we ought not to worry. And I hope, by the time we finish walking through this passage, you will say that there is really no reason for me to be anxious at all.
What I’m saying is that Jesus is going to give us all the information we need in order to overcome anxiety and experience the peace we are seeking.
Then the third and last question we will deal with is this: how we can prevent ourselves from becoming anxious? Jesus doesn’t just tell us what it is and how we can cure it. He tells us how we can prevent it.
You hear people today talk about “preventative medicine.” Most of the time you go to the doctor in order to get healed. It is after the problem has come that you get treatment. But many people today are talking about how to prevent yourself from every having to have the problem in the first place.
And that’s what we find here. There are steps you can take to solve it if you have it. But there are also things you can do to prevent yourself from having to deal with it in the first place.
And those of you who deal with anxiety issues, I hope this is good news to you. Jesus has provided here not only a way for you to escape this bondage you find yourself in, but he also provides some sure fire means by which you can remain steadfast in a life of peace.
Now, just to clarify, we are not going to be able to deal with all of these questions today. I suspect that we are just going to deal with the first question and a little bit of the second. My goal is not to cram everything into one sermon. The issue is such that we need to take our time working through it. The last thing we need is someone becoming anxious because they are experiencing information overload.
So we are going to break things up a little bit. And so, let’s begin with a simple question: what is worry?
I. What is worry?
One of the ways we can define anxiety is by way of its symptoms.
It’s basic symptoms
If you would google anxiety you will likely be pointed to a medical site which, at the very outset, would give you some of the physical signs of worry. Perhaps the most common symptom is tension. By that I mean a simple tightening of one’s muscles, often in the neck and shoulders. And this tension can lead to particular problems, such as back pain and headaches. Some of the more severe forms of it can be shortness of breath or a tightness in the throat.
When people get worried there is often be an increased pulse rate too. Sometimes there are heart palpitations. Sometimes it leads to sweating, restlessness, and insomnia. Some people have it so bad that it leads to great amounts of fatigue and possibly even digestive issues.
Of course, those who have severe anxiety issues can have panic attacks which have rather intensified expressions of many of these things. It can leave them feeling completely paralyzed.
And some of you are probably feeling tense just because I’m talking about this. You’re getting worried because you know all to well what it feels like to be worried.
All of this is, of course, understandable. When you get worried, your body will naturally react by getting itself worked up. Not only is there the emotional discomfort of the anxiety, but it has physical ramifications.
But those are some of the more common symptoms of anxiety. And there is a sense in which you can define anxiety by its physical manifestations.
However, that’s not by any means getting at the nature of the problem. Again, those are just symptoms. What I want to do is develop a better understanding of worry; one that goes beyond mere symptoms (what it looks like) to understanding what it really is.
The world's basic definition
If you would go to just an ordinary English dictionary you might find something like this: “A mental distress or agitation resulting from concern usually for something impending or anticipated.” Notice the emphasis there though. It is a mental distress. It’s something that supposedly happens in your brain.
Now, there’s a bit of a problem with that. Anxiety is not a brain problem. I know it is popular to talk about anxiety as a mental disorder or a mental problem, but what it important for us to understand is that isn’t true. People think it is a mental problem because we live in a culture that says man is merely a physical creature with no soul.
Do you understand what I’m saying? Most of the so called “professional world” are made up of humanists who believe we have evolved from monkeys. They do not believe that God created us, and they certainly do not believe that God imbued us with a living soul. We are just bodies to them. We are just chemicals and matter in motion.
As a result, they have to find an origin for this problem. And what is the natural thing for them to do? They blame it on the brain. And if you have a serious problem with anxiety, they will give some medical lingo to it. You will have what they call “chronic anxiety” or an “anxiety disorder.” But it all comes back to their belief that something is wrong with your head.
But that’s not how we ought to define worry and anxiety. We know that man is more than his material body. We have a spiritual component. And we should think of this as a problem, not of the mind or the brain, but of the soul.
That’s why Jesus can speak to it and give the answers needed to be delivered from it. It doesn’t take a doctor or a psychologist, it takes a Savior. That’s because it is a spiritual and moral issue.
Which leads us to the second thing we can say about what worry is.
A general Biblical definition
The Bible would define it somewhat differently. The Bible would, first and foremost, define it as sin.
Now I know that often doesn’t sit with people very well. There are many people in our world today, and perhaps even some in our midst, who would take great offense at such a claim. They would be applauded that someone like me would try to define anxiety as a transgression against God. They would rather define it as an emotional problem or even a physical problem, not a spiritual one. And they would be aghast to think that someone would come down on a person with this judgmental or overly harsh way of thinking about this problem.
But it is true. Worry is not merely an issue of one’s emotions. It is, before that, a spiritual issue; it goes much deeper than one’s emotions. Worry or anxiety is a transgression against God. It is a sin because, by worry, we fail to put our trust in His all wise plan and rely upon His all powerful provision.
While it does affect the emotions (and may be certainly be characterized as an emotion), we must understand that it is a sinful emotion. It’s not an emotion that God permits. And this is abundantly clear from our text. Jesus says at least three times “Do not worry” or “Do not be anxious.”
And to do something that God expressly forbids is the very definition of sin.
But what I hope you understand is that labeling it a sin should be seen as a very good thing. It is much more helpful than labeling it as a disorder or a chronic illness or merely an emotional problem. Because issues of sin can be rectified. Jesus Christ came into the world to bring us redemption. He provides us with what we need to over come sin and be rid of it.
And that means that anxiety can be something that we are saved from. There’s hope when we look at it like this because it means that there is a way to be released from the bondage of it.
When we look at it in medical terms and see it as a disorder or an illness, then we are doing ourselves a great injustice. It might sound nicer, but there’s a real problem with it: There are no cures. If you take this approach and look at it through the lens of the medical or contemporary psychology, you are trapping yourself in a world of hurt. Because no one can help you.
The best you can do is take a pill and maybe get some tips on coping strategies. Maybe they will tell you to breath into a bag or try to relax. Maybe they will tell you to “decatastrophize” or just try to think better thoughts. But ultimately they have no real remedies they can offer.
So the first thing we must do is define it in a Scriptural way. We must recognize it as a spiritual issue and place it properly in the general category we call sin.
But there’s more here in our passage that helps us understand the nature of anxiety. I want us to think specifically about the word that Jesus uses. The Greek word for anxiety gives us a little more clarification as to what worry is.
A Specific Biblical Definition: division
The word that is used here in this passage is the word merimnaō. And word literally means “to divide or to cut into pieces.” Another way to take it is “to be distracted.”
I believe that is helpful because it is showing you the reality behind worry. You become anxious because your thoughts are divided. Emotionally, you feel that you are cut into pieces because your mind is no longer singular in its focus. Your thought life is fragmented, so to speak. And it is thinking of things that it ought not to be thinking about.
Think of it this way: Instead of focusing on the nature of God and his present calling on your life, your mind gets cluttered with lots of other things. You are distracted by this bill or this scenario. Instead of thinking about who God is and what is, you are finding yourself becoming all up tight over what might be (i.e. “what if...?”).
When it comes to your financial standing or your material goods, this makes sense based on what Jesus has just said: Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Do you see the division? Instead of being focused on your Father who is in heaven and all the glorious things that you can do in this world to create heavenly treasure, your mind is cluttered too much with the things of this world.
That’s why your heart is racing. That’s why you have emotional turmoil. You have become divided in your thoughts and (ultimately) your heart has been derailed from what is to be its real focus.
Let’s just be realistic. If your life is caught up in the things of this world and all the material goods, you’ll never have peace. You'll always be thinking about what you can get and how you can keep it. Or, your mind will be focused on what you don't have and how you can get it. And maybe, you'll be one of those people who is thinking about what other people are thinking about you because you do or don't have it. It’s just not possible to have peace if the material world is your focus.
But if your treasure is in heaven, then it doesn’t matter what happens to you. You will have a peace that surpasses all understanding because you are focused on the greater realities that transcend this world.
Listen to these words from Isaiah 26:3, “You keep him in perfect peace who’s mind is stayed upon Jehovah.”
What is Isaiah saying here? He’s talking about the singular mind; a mind that is not distracted. His mind is ‘stayed upon Jehovah.” What happens to him as a result of his being tuned in to the truth as God has revealed it? He is experiencing perfect peace. It's not a partial peace. It's not a peace that comes and goes. It is a perfect peace. He has an all pervading, all consuming peace because there’s nothing intruding upon his thought life. His heart has a singular focus and his mind has a perfect peace.
That’s the first and only real cure for anxiety. The problem is that your heart has experienced a fracture; your mind fragments and becomes divided. What happens is that the Lord gets pushed out because you’ve allowed all these other troublesome thoughts to come and crowd him out. That distraction is what is making you worried.
So what you need to do is to get your mind back on track.
That means that you first need to repent of having let yourself be cut into pieces. You need to get your heart right with God and ask him to forgive you for letting these other things take your attention.
So you should say, “Lord, I’ve been distracted. I have not loved you with all my heart and mind. I’ve let myself become all caught up in this world and have not let my mind be guided by the truth of your Word. Please forgive me for that.”
And once you do that, you need to start getting your heart and mind in order. You need to put in mind the things of the Lord and let your mind be stayed upon him. Thus, you will drive out the anxious thoughts by putting more righteous thoughts into your mind.
A few years ago I had opportunity to counsel a lady. My wife and I paid a visit to her at her house. When we arrived you could not only sense the tension, but you could physically see it. She sat on the edge of her chair nervously rocking back and forth. The intensity of her movements jostled the baby she held, so much so that he looked like he was on a roller coaster.
I sat down beside her and opened up the Scriptures. I began to read some sections and expound what each said about the Lord. As this woman began focusing in on each passage, a peace began to come over her. Her tension began to ease, her rocking back and forth subsided, and the baby she held fell fast asleep.
There’s no doubt that this woman had quite a way to go. She had created a deep rooted habit of anxiety. Her heart would still struggle with that division and there would be much work that would still need to be done to gain mastery in a singular thought life. But it was evident there that evening that when the heart does become singular--focusing its attention on the revealed truth of God, one experiences the peace God promises.
This, of course, leads us to ask what we must focus our attention on? I mentioned at the outset that Jesus not only tells us what anxiety is, but he tells us why we should not be worried. In sum, if we listen to his arguments on why we should not be worried, we'll be getting the right perspective. Our hearts and our minds will be dialed in to God and to reality as he has created it. To put it another way, Jesus helps us get our minds back on track by giving us an understanding of what we should be thinking about so we won't have a divided mind.
Now, we won’t have time to mention everything, but I would like to mention at least the first item.
II. Why we shouldn’t be worried
A. Because of how important our very existence is [25]
Look at verse 25. Jesus says, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”
What Jesus is doing here is arguing from the greater to the lesser. Think of it this way, which is more important: The body or the clothes that you put on the body? If you were to size them up, which would have more significance: your life, or the food that supports your life?
Now, we know you can’t have life without food and your body needs to be clothed. But Jesus wants us to distinguish between the two. And he wants us to put these things in the balance and weigh them. And the conclusion is this: God values your life. And if he values it, won’t he provide for it?
Think of it this way: We are not the products of evolutionary happen-chance. We are not accidents that came about because something just happened to bump into something else. We exist because of God. We are the direct product of His will and creation. The Lord, in his sovereign might, knit us together.
And since He has given us this tremendous blessing of life, is there any question that he will sustain it? Will he not give us the food we need to support that life?
Think also of our bodies. Don’t just think about the clothes that you put on. That’s so much of what our life revolves around. It’s probably what we think about more. But we need to think about the first principle. Not just the clothes, but the actual body. Have you ever taken time to think about the nature of your physical make up and where your body came from?
That’s what Jesus is saying that we must do. Our bodies are ever so important. These fingers and toes and everything about your body is a result of God’s unique handiwork.
There are a lot of people who would like to say that your body is merely the product of natural processes. Whether they say that you evolved from some primordial slime or simply the natural combination of sperm and an egg.
But if that’s the case, you have everything to worry about. Because you are just on your own. Life came together as an accident, and there is no guarantee you’ll be able to obtain any clothes for yourself. Life is unpredictable and nothing is really guaranteed.
Thankfully, that is not the way the world really operates. Humans are not products of evolution, and our bodies are not merely the outcome of natural processes. Our bodies are special creations of God. Each one of us was willed into existence. More importantly, our bodies bear God’s image.
That gives the body real value doesn’t it? It’s not only valuable to us, but it is valuable to God who is its creator and who’s image it bears.
And if that is the case, if God assigns that kind of importance to your body, will he not then see to it that it is clothed? Isn’t that the direct conclusion we must come to? We have a real guarantee that we shall have our needs provided for because God assigns so much value to us.
In order to convince us that we do not need to worry, Jesus gives us a godly perspective on things. He makes us go back to the very first principle. He makes us look past the daily provisions to the very importance of life itself.
And if we think about how life is more than food and the body more than clothing, then we will see that we have no reason for concern when it comes to such things.
Conclusion:
So let’s take an extreme example. Let’s say that when you get home today you find that there is nothing in the crock pot. As a matter of fact, the kitchen looks like it has been completely ransacked. All the cupboards are open and completely bare. It just so happened that a bunch of bears and raccoons burst into your house and devoured everything. They had such a feast that there is nothing left.
But what’s worse, there’s a message on your answering machine. Your boss had called while you were at worship and said that you shouldn’t come in tomorrow morning. They’ve had to make cuts and they’ve determined that your position is no longer viable under the new system that they are implementing. So, not only do you have no food in the house, but you have no income to purchase any more.
Now you could begin to get tense. You could look around at the mess before you and begin to become anxious about how everything is going to pan out. Your heart rate could increase and the neck and shoulders could start to become stiff as you wonder how now are you going to put food on the table and take care of the rest of the bills.
Or, you could remember what we’ve just talked about. All that is left in this room is simply a testimony of the goodness of God. He has valued your life so much that he put all these things in your care. And being that he continues to place a high value on your personage, you can rest assured that he will go out of his way to tend to your present needs. These bears may have robbed your refrigerator of its contents, but they have not robbed you of your significance. So surely you can trust that he will put in your possession all that you and your family will need.
As your mind has that singular focus, you no doubt will find that there is a peace that pervades your soul, even though there may be a mess all about you.