Responding to Anxiety (Matthew 6 33-34)

Responding to Anxiety (Matthew 6: 33-34)

  33 But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. (Matt 6: 33-34)

Seek First the Kingdom of God.

7 Reasons Why Worrying is a Waste of Time

1.      Worry is needless. 

2.      Worry is senseless.

3.      Worry is useless. 

4.      Worrying is faithless. 

5.      Worry is Godless.

6.      Worry denies our family tie to father God. 

7.      Worrying is impractical. 

Biblical Strategies to Counter Anxiety.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome and Introduction
• 1:12 Seek First the Kingdom of God.
• 11:48 7 Reasons Why Worrying is a Waste of Time
• 15:05 Biblical Strategies to Counter Anxiety.
• 23:05 Farewell and Outro

Transcript

Responding to Anxiety

Matthew 6: 33-34

 Seek First the Kingdom of God.

This is the conclusion of this section of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus has given us some advice on how to address to the problem of anxiety. And it is found in the closing verses beginning in verse 33.

“Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you”. (Matthew 6: 33)

Please note, that if you do, “seek first the Kingdom of God” then all the emotional blessing he has been talking about in this section will be offered to you. The fact that you know he not only know what is best for you but will offer it to you. What things exactly? He is clearly talking about taking care of us, but these things in this context is clearly things that we need like the basics, what we eat and clothes that we put on our back. Remember verse 31, therefore do not worry saying what should we eat what we drink what should we wear for after all these things. 

So, seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things spelled out for us so far including the basics like, what we eat and what we drink and what we wear will be provided for us. But, beyond that the point he is making is that we need to live a life of faith. A life where you’re trusting the Lord and you should be seeking to do his will, and thereby storing up treasure in heaven. By the way that word translated “seek” is the same word used of a hunter who was seeking his pray. The mind must be focused on God and His will, just as a hunter makes the prey the center of his attention, so we should make the seeking of God’s Kingdom the center of ours. We must, “seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness”.

Throughout the book of Matthew Jesus frequently uses the phrase “Kingdom of Heaven”. But this is one of the few places he talks about the, “The Kingdom of God”. Some trying to make a distinction between those two and many have wrestled with that question for years and some come to the conclusion based on some other passages that this was just two ways in which Jesus referring to the same thing. In my estimation, along with many others, I have concluded that this is a reference to the future Kingdom that he’s going to establish on the earth when he returns. Sometimes referred to as the Messianic Kingdom. You see the Old Testament promised the Messiah would come and establish a Kingdom on the earth, in fact, the Book of Revelation ends by saying Jesus is going to come and reign on the earth for 1000 years. I think that the Kingdom of God mentioned here is a reference to that rule and reign of Christ on the earth.  A particular phrase used several times in the book of Matthew as well as the gospel of Luke and some other New Testament passages.

If we seek the Kingdom of God in this life as a believer you will then we are rewarded in the Kingdom of God, in the future I believe the Bible teaches you enter the Kingdom of Heaven by accepting Christ and being born again. This happens immediately after you’ve trusted Christ and are saved from your sin, you’re born into the family of God and have you place in the “kingdom of Heaven” secured.  We are told to seek first the Kingdom of God meaning that you’re focusing on that future time when you rule and reign with Christ. So, what you do now is determining what’s going to happen what will happen for you then, in the future kingdom.

That’s the idea throughout this whole message and throughout the whole sermon, The Sermon on the Mount. I pointed out at the beginning and all the way through is that Jesus is framing everything within the context of him telling us that, unless your righteousness exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees you shall not enter into the Kingdom. It’s the whole subject of his message. It’s about understanding true righteousness. He talked about the Pharisees and their external righteousness, there was a righteousness of ritual and religion. But the righteousness Jesus is teaching here is an internal righteousness, a righteousness that is gifted to us by expressing our faith in God and by walking by faith. It’s trusting him and for the life and the life to come. Which is why he is saying in this verse, if the priority of your life is to seek the Kingdom of God and his righteousness that’s means God is going to reward you in some way later.

There’s a very famous story about our late Queen, Queen Elizabeth II, who once asked a rather successful business manager if he would be an ambassador for her to a foreign country. He initially declined saying that it would cause a severe interruption to his business interests in the UK and might cause him serious financial loss. She is believed to have replied, you look after my business abroad, and I will look after your business at home. He couldn’t turn down an offer like that, so he accepted her offer he went off for several years when he came back to the UK the story goes that he had never knew what exactly she did, if anything, but the business had thrived and grown during his time of service abroad.

Seek first the Kingdom of God his and all these things shall be added to you. One more verse, notice I didn’t say one more point, the last verse of the chapter sums it up and says it all.

Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. (Matthew 6: 34)

As some might say, don’t compound any problems you might think you have today by worrying about tomorrow. The real point is don’t worry about tomorrow’s trouble you just worry about the Lord, you just trust him and leave the rest to Him. Trust the Lord, and in the process of doing that pray like he has just taught us to pray. Remember he just told us a few verses ago when he said, “This is how you should pray, Our father in heaven give us this day Our Daily Bread”. You didn’t say give us tomorrows bread today because you are told just to ask God to give you what is sufficient for today, wait until tomorrow comes, then you can ask God to deal with that then. Let God solve all the problems today, just deal with today and trust he will be there be again for you tomorrow.

If a clock realized it was going to have tick twice a second, that’s a 120 ticks per minute, 7200 each hour, 172,800 tick tocks a day and 1,200,209 thousand ticks per week the top clock suddenly realized that it would take nearly 63 million times during the next  year then it would probably have a heart attack and stop working. But the clock just keeps ticking one tick and one tock, at a time. It the same for us just take one tick at a time and don’t worry about the next tock, it’s coming soon and you’ll be just fine.

It like asking someone are you hungry you can be answered by saying I’m just fine I’ve had breakfast this morning, but I better eat again immediately in case there no lunch later they would think you were nuts. It’s time for you to eat again, when you are hungry again. Were just fine that’s sort of what Jesus is saying here.

7 Reasons Why Worrying is a Waste of Time

To sum all this up and I want to do it make a couple of points one is simple. Don’t worry about your material need because if you trust God and seek his righteousness, he will supply your physical material and material needs day by day. Anxiety is when someone insist on storing up potential imagine problems in the future and dragging them back into the present moment. From a spiritual point of view, it’s a subtle form of worshipping Mammon. It might begin as a prudent forethought, but it is often passes into regarding imagine potential worries usually money or things as a thing in itself It ends with making the future potential loss a sort of a God and it quickly becomes a tyrannical God. Now I want to sum all this up another way that, by showing you something others have said about this passage. Some cleaver people have concluded that there are seven reasons in this passage you should not worry, let me just summarize what they are.

1.      Worry is needless. If God gives us life we can trust him for the things necessary to support life.

2.      Worry is senseless. God feeds birds, birds work hard but they don’t worry.

3.      Worry is useless. Physical life cannot be manipulated, Jesus says you can’t add one inch to your height by worrying about it 

4.      Worrying is faithless. It turns the things you worry about into an idol.

5.      Worry is Godless. It turns the stuff you are worrying about into a God, a tyrannical God.

6.      Worry denies our family tie to father God. The way the defeat worry is to seek the Kingdom of God, and trust the father.

7.      Worrying is impractical. Worrying can be defeated when we acknowledge the art of living one day at a time.

Biblical Strategies to Counter Anxiety.

So let me close by making three short quick simple suggestions on how to deal with anxiety/worry.

 Recognize that what we worry about usually never happens There was a fellow who once said to me, I worry, and it works. How do you know it works I asked him. Because what I worry about doesn’t ever happen.  There was another fellow who decided that because he was worried about dying of cancer he would make some changes to his life. He heard milk was bad so he stopped drinking milk. He was told that fruits were sprayed with insecticides again insects can produce cancer, so he quit eating fruit. Someone said pork causes cancer, so she didn’t eat pork anymore. I joke you not, at 57 he died in an car accident which he was driving 30mph over the speed limit. Everyone who knew him said he always drove like a maniac, but he never once worried about that. If you worry, if you struggle with anxiety, I’d like to make a suggestion. Write down at the end of every day, just for a week all the things you worried about during that week and see how many of them came to pass. Most of the things we worry about don’t ever happen. 

The expression worried sick is more than a figure of speech there is evidence that anxiety is detrimental to health in lots of ways. Research has demonstrated that even mild worry can even affect one’s eyesight Research recently showed that an examination of 500 patients confirmed that more than 1/3 of their visual problems was if exacerbated by emotional tension.  Studies by two universities indicate that a certain cases of glaucoma and even one type blindness can result from untreated clinical anxiety. Tests conducted at Cornell University medical school indicates that the brains’ ability to function is seriously hampered if one is overburdened with the stress. The ability to concentrate is reduced, so is memory and cognitive ability, even creative thinking, and the ability to learn, are all adversely affected by stress. A survey of 5000 students in 21 different colleges confirms that people who chronically worry get significantly lower grades than people who don’t worry and stress about things.

Jesus says all that time that if you are worrying about what yu think is going to happen then you are not trusting the Lord. But also you are not developing the inner righteousness you meant to develop and you are not honoring the Lord with your life. You’re living as God he doesn’t exist. Therefore, don’t worry. 

I have one more point and it’s the final and it’s simple. Trust the Lord. I’m not suggesting you don’t give up work and do nothing, that’s not the point, don’t worry, try and replace the time you spend worrying by making it a time you seek the Lord and God’s righteousness and develop your inner life. If you put your emphasis on the external part of your life you are no different than the Pharisees. The whole point Jesus is making in this passage is we should be trying to develop that inner life, and the first big step towards doing that is to stop worrying about tomorrow.

He ends with that by saying if you were spending today worrying about tomorrow, you’re going to waste today and tomorrow, Trusting the Lord with tomorrow. 

When I was a kid on holiday there was and old ex WWII veteran who used to take all the young kids off on long hikes. One day we were hiking alongside the bank of a river that he said at one point we would need to wade across. All the way along all us boys, all around 11-13 were constantly saying how are we going to get across this fast flowing river. We kept asking him when and how are we going to cross the river. Finally, we all came together and demanded to know how we would cross the river. His reply was simply, he said, don’t worry about crossing the river, he said, we won’t worry about crossing the river until we cross the river. By the way a couple of miles further on there was a place where the river was very wide and shallow with lots of rocks, and we easily crossed the river at that point. “Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things”.