Trust in your Father, who cares for you

Sermon for Trinity 15

Galatians 5:25-6:10  +  Matthew 6:24-34

It’s “do not worry” Sunday again. It almost seems a shame, doesn’t it?, that “do not worry” Sunday only comes around once a year. You probably need it more often than that. But, of course, every Sunday, every sermon, essentially comes with the message of “do not worry,” because every Sunday, every sermon, every preaching of God’s Word points you away from the things that cause you worry toward the Lord God, urging you to trust in the Lord Jesus, to hope in Him, to have faith in Him. And faith, fully formed, drives out all worry and fear, because the One in whom we trust reigns over all the things that cause us worry.

But that doesn’t mean that believers don’t stray into worry and anxiety at times. We do! Which is why Jesus had to speak the words of today’s Gospel from the Sermon on the Mount, and which is also why the Holy Spirit, in His wisdom, saw to it that these words would be recorded for us in Holy Scripture and preached repeatedly in the Church for two thousand years, because He’s well aware of our weaknesses, and of our tendency to worry about things.

Jesus begins in our Gospel with the thing that’s behind many of our worries: Mammon. Money. Earthly wealth and possessions. No one can serve two lords. For either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon. When you order your life around making money and acquiring possessions, you effectively push God to the side. You push Him out of your life. Oh, you may not mean to do that. You may think you can keep God around in the background for emergencies while you continue to make your life decisions based on pursuing wealth. You may think you can keep God tucked away in your pocket to pull Him out once in a while for an occasional prayer or request, while you spend most of your time relying mainly on yourself and on your ability to run things, or to fix things. But it doesn’t work that way, according to Jesus. If you allow concerns about money to order your life, then you are serving it as your lord. If you insist on managing everything by yourself, running everything, trying to fix everything by your own careful planning and prudent actions, then you’re serving yourself as your lord. On the other hand, if you order your life around serving God, hearing His Word and putting it into practice, living each day with the intention of worshiping the true God with your whole self, placing your life into His good and capable hands, then you won’t end up serving Mammon, or trusting in Mammon, or in yourself. You’ll be serving God and trusting in God. Your heart can belong to Him or to something else, but not to both.

Then Jesus goes on to persuade us with gentle and friendly words to serve God instead of Mammon. And here it’s important to remember who He’s talking to. He’s talking to church members who know God, not to atheists who deny Him or unbelievers who don’t acknowledge Him. The Sermon on the Mount was preached to people who knew the true God, the God of Old Testament Israel, but who wanted, who needed to know Him better and who had come to Jesus for that very reason. That’s why He can speak to them about God as their Father in heaven. They knew this God as He had revealed Himself in the Old Testament, as He had created and ordered the world, as He had guided and guarded the patriarchs and the people of Israel. You know this God, too. Most of all, you know God the Father, who sent God the Son to redeem you from sin, death, and the devil, and who still sends God the Holy Spirit to teach you and to guide you. In fact, you know Him even better than the people who originally heard these words from Jesus, because you know the Father through the suffering and death of His Son. So you know just how much He cares about you.

Since you know that, act on what you know. And that applies, first and foremost, to the attitudes of your heart. Therefore I say to you, stop worrying about your life, what you will eat, or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? The unbelievers of the world wouldn’t agree with Jesus. They would say that our body and life has to be the first and primary concern. If your body doesn’t have the necessary nourishment, if you have no clothes to wear, what can you accomplish in life? Therefore, it should be your first and primary concern to ensure you have food and clothing, and not just enough for today, but for tomorrow and for the future. That’s where the world would have you focus your attention. This also applies to elections, by the way. If you want a good earthly life, then you have to be focused on getting the right people elected! Pour yourself into the fight!

But Jesus says, no, life is more than that. That can’t be the primary focus of your life. Because, if you serve God, if He is your Lord, it doesn’t need to be.

Look at the birds of the air! They do not sow, nor do they reap, nor do they gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they do not toil, nor do they spin. And yet I tell you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not dressed like one of these. Therefore, if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today stands and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

God has left a witness in nature, a witness of His care and concern for His creation, in how He cares for and provides for the birds of the air and the flowers of the field. But Jesus takes that general truth written into nature and applies it in a special way to those whom the heavenly Father has called His children. If God cares for the birds that were never made in His image, if God provides beauty for the grass of the field that grows for a few days and then is gone forever, shouldn’t you conclude that He cares more and will provide far better things for those whom He has created to be with Him forever, for those upon whom He has placed His name—the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Yes, you should conclude that!

And you should also admit something else. Which of you by worrying can add one foot to his stature? Or “one hour to his life”? All right. Let’s hear it. Which of you? Worrying, fretting, being anxious about providing for some need that you have—does it get you any closer to actually providing what you need? You know it doesn’t. And so Jesus, in a loving but direct way, tells you, “Stop it. Don’t do it.”

So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or, ‘What shall we drink?’ or, ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles chase after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. Why should you quiet your anxious thoughts? Why should you stop going over and over in your head how you’re going to provide for yourself? Not only because it doesn’t do any good, but because it’s what the Gentiles do. Now, the Gentiles are literally just the non-Jewish nations, and in that sense, we’re all Gentiles here. But Jesus is referring to the Gentiles as those who don’t know God, who have no faith in Him. So it makes perfect sense that they spend their time thinking anxiously about how to provide for themselves for this life.

But you have a heavenly Father who knows that you have earthly needs, bodily needs. You have a heavenly Father who gave His own Son into death for your sins. Why should you be like the Gentiles who think they have to be in control of everything, and figure out everything for themselves, who think that the present and the future depend on them and their worrying and planning and executing?

No, instead, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Seek first. Before anything else, turn your thoughts to seeking God, and His kingdom, and His righteousness. You have already sought the righteousness of God by believing in Christ Jesus to blot out your sins and to make you righteous before God. Now seek the righteousness of God by being concerned with His kingdom. Seek the kingdom of God by hearing and pondering His Word. Seek the kingdom of God by going about the daily tasks He’s given you in your vocations. Seek to be the light of the world that God has called you to be. Seek to lead holy lives that bring glory to the name of your heavenly Father. And do this “first,” before giving a single thought to where your food or clothing or other necessities are going to come from. When you do that, you’ll find that all those things are added to you by God, according to your needs, according to His wisdom and merciful care. You couldn’t add a single hour to your life by your worrying. But when you concern yourself first with the kingdom of God and His righteousness, He Himself will do the adding of the things that you need.

So, Jesus concludes, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. It is enough for each day to have its own trouble. Tomorrow isn’t in your hands. It’s in God’s hands. So turn your attention to what He has given you to do today, not to worry about today, but to do today. Seek His kingdom. Seek His righteousness. Trust in Him. And, as Peter writes in his first epistle, cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you. Amen.