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Today's scripture reading is from the Gospel according to Matthew.
Chapter 6, verses 24 through 34 is printed in the liturgy.
This is a reading from the Gospel according to Matthew.
No one can serve two masters.
Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve both God and money.
Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear.
Is not life more than food and the body more than clothes?
Look at the birds of the air.
They do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them.
Are you not much more valuable than they?
Can any one of you, by worrying, add a single hour to your life?
And why do you worry about clothes?
See how the flowers of the field grow?
They do not labor or spin.
Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.
So if that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire,
will he not much more clothe you, you of little faith?
So do not worry, saying, what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what shall we wear?
For the pagans run after all these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them.
But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.
Each day has enough trouble of its own.
This is the gospel of the Lord.
Praise to you, O Christ.
Well, thank you, Tonya, for that scripture reading.
Good morning, everyone.
My name is Andrew.
I'm one of the pastors here.
And gung hai fachoi to those of you who celebrate.
And also, go Niners, right?
Go Niners.
Will you pray with me as we open up God's word today?
Oh, Lord, would you speak through me, through your word, to our hearts this morning.
Free us from the dominion of worry and anxiety.
And give us hearts that truly seek first your kingdom, your imperishable kingdom,
your kingdom of peace and righteousness, we pray in the name of Jesus.
Amen.
So, you know, earlier this week, I was studying for this sermon,
and I was reading one of the commentators I often consult for the book of Matthew.
He's maybe a little bit more on the theologically liberal side of the spectrum.
Sometimes I disagree with him.
Other times, I think he hits it out of the park.
But this week, he said something I definitely disagree with.
This commentator, see, he was formerly a missionary in the Philippines,
and he's seen extreme poverty.
And what he said was,
I would not preach this text to the poor.
Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink,
or about your body, what you will wear.
He was convinced that to preach this text to the poor would be just absolutely cruel.
Now, while I certainly understand his reasoning,
I have to respectfully disagree, because this is the word of God.
Jesus' words are the words of life,
and so they can and should be proclaimed to anybody and everybody,
male and female, rich and poor, Christian or not.
But I want to say that with extreme caution and sensitivity as well,
because when we speak the words of Jesus,
and how we speak the words of Jesus, it matters.
It must be done with wisdom.
Years ago, my brother-in-law, he's at this church in Fremont,
and he told me about a pastoral situation that was going on.
There was a young woman in their church struggling with anxiety.
And she went to the wife of one of the pastors and said,
you know, I'm struggling with anxiety.
I'm just worrying about these things.
And then the wife of the pastor, kind of unpastorally,
pointed her to Paul's letter in Philippians chapter 4.
And she said, hey, do not be anxious, right?
Do not be anxious about anything,
but in everything through prayer and supplication,
with thanksgiving, present your request to God.
And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding,
will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus, right?
You think the problem was solved right there?
No.
Basically, she said, stop being anxious,
because that's disobeying God's word.
So just stop it.
I'm trying not to do that today.
And I don't think that's what Jesus is doing here in the Gospel of Matthew.
The Scriptures teach that Jesus was what?
He was bold and prophetic.
Sure, he was definitely confrontational.
But he was also, what?
Gentle and kind and inviting.
He's described in the Scriptures as what?
Full of grace and truth.
So coming to our text today,
while I disagreed with this liberal New Testament scholar that I read,
I believe that our passage today is for everyone.
But I also want to acknowledge that there are people in this room who I know
are very concerned about some very serious things in their lives at this moment.
Worried about rent.
Worried about how your children are going to turn out.
Worried about family members, employment.
Maybe you have new and unexpected cost of living increases.
There are a hundred things, a thousand things I'm sure that are plaguing us,
worrying us here today.
And the first thing that I want to say before we get into the message is that
we're here for you as a church.
Christ Church is here for you.
Jonathan, myself, our elders, our deacons, we're here.
We'd love to sit down with you, to listen to you, to pray for you after the service.
That's what we're here to do.
We even have a deacon fund here to provide temporary relief for those in need.
In the past year, this deacons fund has helped people with rents, with their mortgages.
We've helped provide daytime care for family members.
We've also helped cover the cost of counseling for people in our church.
This is a church that is here for you, especially if you are members.
Please don't hesitate to reach out because your burdens are our burdens.
But now, as it relates to our scripture reading this morning, what I'm trying to say is that
the burden for me as a preacher of this text is to boldly preach the words of Jesus, telling
us not to worry.
But at the same time, the last thing I want to do is bash you over the head, right, with
the words of Jesus.
Hey, Jesus just says, don't worry, so stop it.
All right?
So what we're going to try to do is we're going to try to thread the needle, okay?
Try to thread the needle to understand the heart and the words of Jesus.
Now again, Jesus' command is his command to not worry.
It's pretty silly if you think about it, right?
Because, like, nobody wants to worry.
This is a command that we actually all want to obey.
Sure, I'd love to obey you, Jesus.
Sure, I would love to never worry.
But at the end of the day, it's hard, isn't it?
We just can't, right?
Why?
Well, because there are truly some worrisome things in all of our lives, right?
You know, while some people might look at Jesus' words here and interpret Christianity
or religion in general as a crutch or some opiate for the masses, helping people hide
from reality and take comfort in the lie that they don't need to worry about anything, I
want to assure you that Christianity isn't some kind of religion that just beckons you
to live in a fake, alternative reality.
I would argue that Christianity is the most realistic about our hardships, all the hardships
that we face, and the real reasons humans have to worry.
The scriptures themselves acknowledge that we have reasonable reasons to worry.
The story of the Bible is that because humanity has broken our relationship with God, turned
our own way instead of His, we've now got tons to worry about, like death and suffering
and how we're going to be reconciled to this holy, almighty God that we've strayed from and
offended and rebelled against.
Because Christianity is utterly realistic about why we worry.
And at the same time, Jesus still has the audacity to say, do not worry.
And filled with Christ's spirit, the Apostle Paul, he says, do not be anxious.
He does say that, do not be anxious.
And I mean, probably the most repeated command in the scriptures is what?
Fear not.
Do not be afraid.
So how do we hold these two truths that we feel are real and necessary?
How do we keep it real about our genuine worries and about the uncertainty and the hardships
of life?
And yet, how do we also follow Jesus' exhortation to not worry?
How do we do that?
That's the question for us today.
That's a question all of us, like all of us, have to grapple with.
Not just those of us who claim to follow Jesus, because I mean, even if you don't know what
you think about Jesus, right?
This is something you have to grapple with.
You know that worry is real.
It's a universal struggle.
And yet, you also yearn for a day when you won't worry any longer.
We all have to figure this out.
So again, how do we hold these two things?
Well, what I want to argue is that while God himself acknowledges that we truly have good
reasons to worry, Jesus reminds us that we have even better reasons not to worry.
So I want to spend some time talking about this.
I want to talk about, you know, number one, the truly good reasons we do have to worry.
And then number two, the even better reasons we have to not worry.
So first, the truly good reasons we have to worry.
Now again, God doesn't call us to ignore the things that worry us.
Christianity isn't a pie in the sky, make-believe, pipe dream faith.
It isn't some hakuna matata, positive psychology kind of hack, all right?
Again, I would argue that Christianity acknowledges the things that worry us with more clarity than
any other faith and even accounts for the things that worry us.
I mean, in this story in which Jesus Christ is at the center, no other story better accounts
for why we worry in the first place.
Let's consider the history of worry, all right?
See, according to the Christian tradition, we were made in the image of God, right?
To be royal children of our Father in heaven, we were meant never to worry.
In the beginning, humanity went on daily walks with God, calm and secure and intimate in the
loving embrace of the Father in His luscious garden.
And remember, we were just going for walks, not runs, not trying to maximize, get that high
intensity workout in.
No, we were just walking, strolling with our Father.
Yesterday, before I, you know, got to my sermon, which was very much not finished, and also
before I went into a five and a half hour meeting for work, I went for a walk with my youngest
daughter, Leah.
And we just held each other's hands, and we were just present with each other, and we
stopped at a tree, and we looked at a squirrel.
And we were just there and present to each other and to the tree and to the squirrel, unhurried
and unworried.
And there was just something right and good and pure about that moment, and I think that
was a glimpse of the garden.
But not only did we once walk with God, unhurried and unworried, but we also had a measure of
control.
We hadn't yet rebelled against God.
The only command He'd given us was to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth with
His glory.
Basically, He said, flourish.
Just flourish, guys.
But see, worry and anxiety entered into creation as soon as we doubted the goodness of God.
As soon as we doubted that God knew what was going to happen tomorrow, when He said, if
you eat of that fruit, you will surely die.
As soon as we doubted our tomorrows, doubted what was to come next, doubted whether God's
way was the best way, as soon as we entertained this idea that God might be withholding something
from us, keeping us from an even higher God-like status, that's when thorns and thistles and
sweat and toil entered into our reality.
That's when worry entered into our psyches, this anxiety-inducing threat of returning to
the dust one day.
And out of that worry, you have Adam and Eve's murderous son, Cain, right?
And what does he do?
He goes and he builds this city, not for the sake of cultivating creation or arriving at
the new Jerusalem city, but for the sake of, what?
Self-protection.
As soon as he murders Abel, he's like, God, what am I going to do?
People are going to come after me, right?
How are you going to help me out, God?
It's all about self-protection for him.
So he builds this city to defend himself against other human beings whom he now perceives as
threats to his existence.
And this was the beginning of the whole story of people serving money over God, as it says
here in verse 24.
Now, honestly, I don't prefer the NIV's translation here of the Greek word mamona, or just translate
it as money.
I'm sure you've heard the phrase, you can't serve God and mammon.
I much prefer that just more literal translation.
You can't serve God and mammon because what mammon is isn't simply money.
It's not simply wealth or affluence.
Mammon is simply property.
Simply material possessions, no matter how few.
When Cain built his city east of Eden, this was the beginning of what we understand today
as like property.
Like before the fall, I'm not sure there was a sense of property as we understand it today.
I think for Adam and Eve, it all just belonged to God.
Like God didn't say, be capitalist and multiply and lay claim upon as much earth as you can and
subdue it and exercise selfish dominion over it.
No, he said, be fruitful and multiply and fill my earth with my glory.
Subdue it and exercise my perfect kingdom dominion over it.
And I'm not trying to be political here.
I'm not trying to be, you know, anti-capitalism or about socialism or anything like that.
I'm going to leave that to the politicians.
But I do want us to see that from the beginning, we were never meant to be owners in an absolute
sense over anything in creation, even our own bodies.
We were always meant to be stewards of creation, cultivators of creation, vice regents, children
of the king.
Not asking the question, how much of this creation can I acquire for myself?
But recognizing that everything we have, everything that we see, even our own bodies,
belongs to God.
And asking, how can I best cultivate all of creation for my creator's glory and for every
other creature's good forever and ever?
So basically, what I'm trying to say is that we worry because when sin and therefore scarcity
entered into this world, when we strayed from God, we suddenly had a lot to worry about,
didn't we?
A lot to worry about, a lot to be anxious about.
We broke our relationship with the one who gave us life.
All of a sudden, we became those who had to hide, right?
We had to hide from our maker and our sustainer.
No more calm walks in the garden, but now running away from God and away and against all the rest
of creation, just trying to survive.
Thorns and thistles, sweat and toil, hustle and hurry and worry.
This is why we worry.
This is why we're scared about tomorrow, right?
Like in the past, before the fall, before sin entered into the world, we knew that tomorrow
would just be another walk with our loving Father in the cool of the day, in the calm
of the morning.
But ever since the fall, we have no idea what tomorrow is going to bring.
All we know are the troubles of today and our exhaustion from running and sweating, running
away from our predators, running to outdo our competitors, sweating to make our bread.
Whereas once we lived in a creation where we could always count on fruit from this tree
or that tree to sustain us, now we don't know.
I don't know if I'm going to have a job tomorrow.
Let's see how this sermon goes.
We don't know how our relationships are going to turn out.
We don't know how our health is going to turn out.
Whether our kids are going to be okay.
Whether our retirement accounts are going to increase or shrink.
We have tons of good and reasonable reasons to worry.
Namely because we are frail, finite, independent creatures who've made ourselves at odds with
God, the giver of life.
And we are at the mercy of so many factors far, far, far beyond our reach and our agency.
But the good news of Jesus, the good news of Jesus is that for every good reason we have
to worry, he offers us better reasons not to worry.
Point number two.
Now the first reason that Jesus gives is this.
Verse 25.
He says, do not worry because your life is more than food and your body is more than clothes.
Jesus reminds us that life and the integrity of our bodies is about far more than what we
have or do not have.
He's saying, who you are is about so much more than what you possess or what you don't
possess.
And I know that's hard for some of us to believe.
It reminded me of this book that I consulted when I was doing my PhD on Chinese American
evangelicals.
There's this sociologist out of UC San Diego.
Her name's Lisa Soon-hee Park.
She wrote this book called Consuming Citizenship.
And basically she argued that for many Korean and Chinese American immigrants, they sought to
belong as Americans through consumption.
Believing that their consumption habits could signal their status in this country.
Because that's how they saw the system working in this country.
If I can buy what you buy, if I can eat what you eat, if I can travel where you travel, if
I can shop where you shop, if I can drive what you drive, wear what you wear, consume what
you consume, then I can prove that I belong.
These are my symbols of equality.
Signs that I have adapted to the social and economic hierarchy here.
And so many of us believe similarly, right?
That what we have defines who we are.
That what we have defines our life and our identity.
But Jesus says, no.
Your life is more, he says.
Your identity is more than what you have or what you don't have.
And Lisa Soon-hee Park says the same.
She questions the social and economic hierarchy that Americans have erected in the very first
place.
What does Jesus say?
Jesus says, my kingdom is different.
And whoever desires to save their life will lose it.
But whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.
And what shall it profit a man?
To gain the whole world, right?
But to forfeit their soul.
Now Jesus gives another reason.
Let's look at his second reason to not worry in verses 26 through 30.
And this second reason is, look at the birds.
Look at the flowers, he says.
Do not worry.
Look at the birds.
Look at the flowers.
You know, I remember in my darkest days of my PhD in Scotland, when I felt like I was
never going to make it, never going to get my thesis done.
I would look out the window.
And there'd be these disgusting pigeons outside the window, just chilling.
Not a care in the world.
Swooping down to grab a crumb of bread every once in a while, then getting back up by the
window, pooping whenever they felt like, just chilling.
And I'd be jealous of the dirty pigeons.
I'd be jealous.
The pigeon that wasn't trying, that wasn't sweating for their bread, wasn't sowing or reaping or
figuring out, huh, how am I going to buy a barn to store all my breadcrumbs in?
It wasn't like the pigeon was wearing a fanny pack for those extra breadcrumbs, right?
Yet my father in heaven fed that pigeon.
Or let's talk about flowers.
Or we're in California, let's talk about the redwoods, all right?
Last weekend, I wasn't here because we took our high schoolers to winter youth retreat
out in Occidental at one of our elders' houses.
Matt Branagh, thank you so much, Branagh family.
And I was just thinking about this tree that they have on their property.
There's this tree there.
It's like, you can get like a dozen people around it.
And Matt said it's like a thousand years old.
And I was thinking about this tree and I was like, man, has this tree ever worried for the
past thousand years?
Has it ascended into the heavens in all its glory?
Has this tree ever toiled and sweat to grow and become this thing of beauty that it is?
And does it not have more beauty and majesty and splendor?
Or far out doing, you know, the artificial cosmetic stuff we might see, you know, adorning our
shopping malls around Christmas?
Don't miss Jesus' line here in verse 26.
Are you not much more valuable than they?
To your heavenly father?
To those trees?
To the flowers?
Then the birds, are we not much more valuable than they?
To our heavenly father?
There's this little poem coming out of the 19th century by this poet, Elizabeth Chaney.
She wrote,
Friends, all of creation testifies against us when we worry.
The birds, the trees, the flowers.
We are the only creatures of God that worry.
But, you know, actually for the birds and the flowers and the redwoods, you know, God is just
their creator, right?
But what is he to us?
He's not just our creator.
He met us in his image.
He's our heavenly father.
He's a heavenly father to us and to us alone.
And will he not much more clothe us and feed us, oh, we of little faith?
For which of us, if we ask our father for bread, will give us a stone?
Or if we ask for a fish, will give us a serpent?
Does he not delight in giving us good things?
Is he not the father of lights who gives us every good and perfect gift?
The father of the prodigal son, is he not that father?
Now, you might be sitting here and you'll be like,
but hey, I've seen a bird get injured before.
I've seen a flower get mown over.
I've seen a redwood tree fall, get burned down, get chopped down.
Isn't that proof that God either isn't that good or that he isn't exactly in control?
That brings me to our third better reason to not worry.
Verse 27.
Can any one of you, by worrying, add a single hour to your life?
Now, if you're here and your big hang-up with God is that you see flowers get mown down,
and you see redwoods fall, and you see bird nests destroyed, and human beings suffer,
and you have trouble believing in a God who could allow this within creation history,
my question for you is, well, without God, what's the problem anyway?
What even is death but, you know, just some neutral cessation of various cells functioning
as they previously had before?
Now, I imagine that very few of us actually think this way.
Even if we don't believe in God, I'm sure most of us believe there is goodness
and there is wrongness, right?
And if that's you, my question to you, though, is similar to Jesus' in verse 27.
I was talking with one of our youth mentors, one of our deacons, Megan Kelly, earlier this week,
and she's reflected a lot on this text and in her own life,
and she had this excellent, excellent insight, which was the question, like,
without God, without hope, with nothing but the reality of sometimes good in this world,
but a whole lot of not good, a whole lot of pain, a whole lot of suffering,
and possibly more to come, why would you even want to add a single hour to your life?
And Megan was like, I think a lot of us live for a long life
when really we should be pursuing a full life.
Wow, right?
I said, you should come and preach this Sunday.
See, I think a lot of us see verse 27 about not being able to add an hour to our life
as a defeating yet logical reality that Jesus is just using to make a point.
And it definitely is that.
Worry and anxiety are not going to give us more life.
It actually may shorten our lives.
That's why it says in verse 34, don't worry about tomorrow today.
Because, right, it's simple math.
If you worry about tomorrow today and your fears don't materialize,
you just wasted your time, right?
And if you worry about tomorrow today and they do materialize,
well, you worried twice, but still for no gain.
Like, it's math, right?
But, like, what if verse 27 is not just bad news
that we can't prolong our own lives through worry,
but also good news that we aren't in control of our own lives
and that, yes, we may die, but that that's okay.
And I want to say that with extreme caution because death is serious.
It's painful.
It hurts.
And I don't want to take that away from anyone who's experienced that in this room.
But the beauty of the gospel of Jesus, the resurrected Christ,
is that death is not the ultimate defeater.
That is the gospel.
Jesus himself said yes to death.
Death.
And if he had not been humiliated in death,
he also would not have been exalted in resurrection.
Death didn't thwart the plan of God,
but God made it work within his plan.
And that's how amazing our God is.
That's how amazing the gospel is.
Again, think about that redwood tree that did not worry for a thousand years,
but for a thousand years simply grew under God's care, right?
And yet if God one day said to that tree in Matt Branagh's backyard,
fall, the tree would say, yes, Lord.
And God's perfect plan for history and for that tree and for new creation
would continue unaltered for the glory of God and for the good of all of us.
The beautiful truth of Christianity is that death need not be our ultimate fear.
Death can even be a noble and an act of obedience unto the plans and purposes of God.
So Christ Church, let us ask ourselves,
do we just live to live longer?
Is the chief end of man to not die?
Or is it to glorify God and enjoy him forever,
as it says in the doctrinal standards of our church?
What if to live is Christ and to die is gain?
Are we merely pursuing a long life?
Or are we actually pursuing a full life, glorifying God,
enjoying God in the way of our crucified and risen Lord?
Don't we want something worth living for and dying for,
truly worth living for and dying for?
I want to suggest that only Jesus,
the one who lived and died and lived again,
is that one thing that is both worth living for and dying for.
And this brings me to our final better reason not to worry, verses 31 to 33.
So the question isn't ultimately, what do we have or not have?
That's going to make the difference in whether or not we are worrying people.
The question is ultimately, what do we seek?
What are our hearts after?
In verses 31 and 32, Jesus says that those who worship other gods,
they're the ones worrying about food and drink and clothing and what they have and don't have.
But Jesus is like, how is that working out for them?
Do you really want what they have?
Do you really want to join that rat race?
Have you ever seen anyone win at that game?
And do those people even know what they need?
Like what if they're seeking the wrong things?
That's why I love verse 32.
Jesus says, your heavenly father knows that you need these things.
Jesus is saying, we can either run frantically after what we think we need,
or we can run after him and his father who knows exactly what we need.
And like he knows, he knows that we need to eat,
he knows that we need to drink,
he knows that we need clothing.
Jesus is the very one who taught us to pray,
give us this day our daily bread.
And who of us here truly has not gotten our daily bread ever a single day of our lives?
Like honestly.
I would love to share with you the story of how I came to Christ Church.
I was thinking about it just the other day.
There are like six other churches that I was considering being at,
and I think about five of them just like have really just disastrous things have happened.
And I would have really got caught holding the bag on all of them.
But I decided to stay here, even if it meant fundraising,
because I just believe that this was what God wanted me to do.
And I'm so thankful.
God has provided for me.
He's provided for my family.
That's my testimony.
I've experienced it.
So Jesus' commendation here,
Jesus' solution to all our worries is not to get more stuff.
It's to check our hearts.
To examine what it is that we are truly seeking.
He says,
Our Father knows what we need.
We're going to be fine.
So, verse 33.
Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness,
and all these things will be given to you as well.
And if you know the song, teach it to your children.
And if you don't, come to me.
I'll teach it to you.
Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness,
and all these things will be given unto you.
Jesus is saying that our fears,
and our worries, and our anxieties
won't actually be resolved
if we get what we think will quell them.
Because we could always lose them again.
Our jobs, our relationships, our health.
So He implores us to seek first the imperishable.
His kingdom.
A kingdom that could not be defeated
even when its king was crucified on a cross.
A kingdom that transcends every would-be kingdom,
every city and empire that rises up
to rid itself of all its worries.
Jesus' kingdom alone,
His resurrection, new creation,
kingdom alone can truly rid us of all our worries.
You know, I watched some TED Talks this week
about worry and fear and anxiety.
And one TED Talker was like,
hey, look, look on the bright side.
40% of the things we worry about will never happen.
And I was like, that's not even that good.
40%? Come on.
So she said,
40% of the things we worry about will never happen.
30% of the things,
and I didn't fact check this,
so I'm just taking her word.
30% are things in the past that can't be helped.
12% involve things that aren't our business anyway.
And 10% relate to sickness, real or imagined.
So that leaves us with 8%.
8% of the things that we worry about
actually happen to us.
And she's like, hey, that's not that bad.
But I'm like, that's pretty bad.
Steph Curry shot 92% a couple years ago.
I remember a lot of the free throws that he missed.
They're crucial free throws.
All right?
8% is a lot.
We didn't win the championship that year.
So I was like, yo, you are crazy.
Those stats are terrible.
You're betting your life on 8%.
But she was like, well, you know,
what we have to do is we have to take on fear projects
and embrace our fear, expose ourselves to our fear,
face our fears, and become warriors.
But I was like, but that's precisely the problem.
That's precisely the problem.
What if we can't become warriors?
What if we're not enough?
What if we aren't up for the fight?
What if it's a fight we can't win?
Like this game of life.
And I was like, man, if this is the best the world can offer,
how could we not all turn to Jesus?
How could we not all turn to Jesus?
See, the beauty of the gospel is that Jesus calls us
not to be our own warriors conquering our own fears and worries.
He doesn't call us to be warriors,
but he calls us to be worshipers.
And this is the difference.
A warrior trusts in themselves,
in their own competencies and capabilities
to rid themselves of all worry.
But a worshiper trusts in God,
the only one who can truly add an hour to our life,
even after we die.
This is a God who adds eternity to our lives,
though we die.
He promises to raise us up again with his son,
if we would just trust him,
unite ourselves to him by faith.
This is the one who calls us not to worry.
This is the one who knows what we need,
the one whose son is the resurrection and the life.
Christ Church, what if we believed in this kind of a God?
What if we believed in this kind of God?
The world tells us that we cannot care without worrying,
but Jesus says otherwise.
Like, what if instead of worrying,
instead of sprinting through our consumeristic lives,
operating by the world religion of acquisitions,
what if we were a counterculture?
Like, if we didn't worry about what we ate,
drank, and wore,
how much more might we feed and clothe
our neighbors around us?
What if do not worry doesn't just mean
do not worry for your own sakes,
but do not worry for others' sakes?
The other side of the coin of do not worry
is to give generously, graciously,
sacrificially to others.
What if do not worry means do not cheat,
do not hoard, do not overwork,
do not overfunction, do not be overbearing,
do not just look out for your own interest
to try to win a game we were never meant to win
in a counterfeit kingdom that will surely perish.
Do not worry means seek first the kingdom of God
and his righteousness.
And all these things he promises will be added unto you,
if not before your death, then surely after.
And this is the gospel of the risen Christ.
This is the good news.
Christ, our hope in life and death.
Let's pray.
Lord, would you open our eyes to the futility of worry
and the great fulfillment of worship.
Convince us to seek first your kingdom
and your righteousness and help us to trust you
for our daily bread that we might pour ourselves out
for others just as Christ did for us, oh God,
when he did not worry about what he ate or drank or wore,
but hungered and thirsted naked upon a cross.
Help us to believe in the abundance that we have in him,
that we have in you, our good, good father.
You who did not spare your son,
but gave us up as a ransom for us all.
How will you not also along with him
graciously give us all things?
You are a good, good father.
We trust that, we believe that.
And when we don't, oh God, help our unbelief.
Be honored in us, oh God, we pray.
In the name of Jesus, amen.
Batavia
A
In the name of Jesus, amen.
We pray for exhausted we have good Oh God,
And they will not be able to understand
inUM of a picture.
I come up to you,
and we will not live before it shall be
in a will of Jewish Delos.
We'll pray for at least two or three
which allows you to build with your didn't
to celebrate your немножечко
of your son is finally up to both nets
for the entire empire,
or leave you or an apple to eat.
task 34
Yes,
we do not live before that right.