Rev. Matthew Versemann

                                                                                      St. John Lutheran Church

                                                                                      Waverly, Iowa

                                                                                      12th Sunday @ Pentecost

                                                                                      August 8th, 2010

 

“The Anxiety Of Little Faith”

God’s PEACE is ALWAYS YOURS in Jesus.

 

Hear the Word of God from Luke 12,

 

“Jesus said, ‘Do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. Life is more than food, and the body is more than clothes. Consider the birds: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds….do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.”

 

DEAR FRIENDS IN CHRIST,

 

Anxiety. It keeps us up at night, distracts us during the day, chews at our digestive tract, and doesn’t add a single moment to our lives, but has the potential to shorten it. So Jesus says, “Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear.” Anxiety will rob you of the joy of living as a child of God, receiving everything as a gift from the gracious hands of a loving Father.

 

But why shouldn’t we worry about food and clothing, when we need these things to survive? Because, Jesus said, “life is more than food, and the body more than clothing.” The believer who knows God to be a good and gracious Father does not need to worry, because of Who God is, What He has done for us, and How He promises to take care of His children. Anxiety and worry is the way of unbelief and the unbeliever, who does not know God to be good and gracious, or who is unsure of it. Jesus warns us about the anxiety of unbelief, and the liturgy of nervousness, that arises when our false gods have failed to perform for us.

 

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Anxiety eats away at us like rust – a corrosion of the soul – chewing us up from the inside out. But Jesus comes along and says, “Do not worry!”  That’s like saying, “Don’t breathe!” The housing market is tanking, stocks are on a roller coaster ride, my retirement fund is in shambles, they’re laying off people at work, my marriage is on the skids, and Jesus says, “Don’t be anxious!” How can He say that?

 

Easy! He’s the Lord who creates universes with just a Word (Gen. 1); Who heals diseases with just a word (Luke 7), Who raises the dead with just a Word (John 11); Who casts out demons with just a Word (Mark 1, 5), Who the sun, moon, stars, plants, animals, and storms must obey (Mark 5); Who rules over all things (Eph. 1); Who works all things together for good to them that love Him (Romans 8:28); Who died and checked back out of His grave alive to make us His children (John 19-20). Not only that, but Scripture tells us that He is, “Familiar with all our ways,” and ‘Familiar with our suffering.’ He faced the most anxiety-causing event anyone could ever face when He permitted Himself to be pummeled on the cross, abandoned by God, and damned in hell. He says, “Do not worry!” because of Who He is and what He’s done.

 

So why do we worry? Worry is unbelief – it is “not trusting God to be good and gracious, and ‘to work all things together for good to those who love Him.”

Worry happens when we focus our attention on our circumstances, rather than on the fact that the Son of God bled to death on a cross for me, and God calls me His kid; and there is nothing that my heavenly daddy can’t do to take of me. Worry - or as I like to call it “the liturgy of nervousness” - happens when we live as though we are our own little gods, the center of the universe, and that life is finally “all about me, and my family, and sports, and fun, and money, and shopping, living comfortably, and gizmo’s, and gadgets, and pleasing my nerve endings, and fishing, and hiking, and vacationing, and golfing and sleeping in, and school activities, and whatever other priorities get in the way of seeing Jesus as the center and all in all of my life.

 

Jesus says, “Look at the birds of the sky, and the lilies of the valley.” Now first of all, you’re going to have to get away from the mall, and the television set to do that, and that’s part of our problem.

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Jesus says, “Look at the birds of the sky, they neither sow, nor reap, nor store in barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them, and how much more valuable you are than birds.” God gave His Son to die for you. That’s what you’re worth to Him. The Father Who provides for the lilies of the valley, the birds of the air, and the grass of the field, which cannot and do not pray; will certainly provide for the crown of His creation, whose lives are worth the blood of His Son.

 

Jesus says, “Consider the lilies of the valley. They do not weave, or spin, (or go shopping at the mall), yet not even Solomon (with all of his bling) was arrayed like these. And you are much more valuable than these.” In fact, think about this: when we want things to look pretty, what do we do? We put flowers on it. But what happens to those flowers in a few days: dried up, rotten, compost, gone. So let’s work this from lesser to greater:  If God expends all that creative energy on flowers, which are here today, and gone tomorrow; how much more will He do for you, His blood-bought child, destined for eternal life? Do you really believe that He will not care about you, for whom He invested the blood of His Son? 

 

So He calls His ‘worrying disciples’ – ‘little faith ones’ – which is better than ‘no faith ones’, but He calls them ‘little faith ones’. We trust God with the big stuff: sin, death, and hell; forgiveness, life, and heaven. Yet we rack our brains over the day to day details. We think that we have to handle and solve the day-to-day problems - which is a lie from the devil - and as we do that, the birds and the flowers end up being much more faithful than we, His blood-bought children.

 

The late, Dr. Ken Korby once said:  “Anxiety is the worship we offer our false gods. For idols, which can do nothing, will always end up consuming their worshipers.”

If you follow your anxieties, they will lead you straight to your false gods, who promise you everything, but deliver nothing.  And where it finally leads is to the idols of your sinful heart; for there is nothing more anxiety-causing than trying to be God. We worry about sickness and death, forgetting that even these cannot touch us except when God permits, where God permits, how God permits, to the extent God permits, and for the purpose God permits; and even when I die, God’s going to use that to take me home to heaven.

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While it’s not wrong to hate sickness and death (because these are actually the consequences of sin); nevertheless, it is idolatry to think that God cannot or will not take care of my family, my spouse, or His church if I get sick and die. That’s the idolatry and burden of trying to be your own little god. Throughout Scripture God reminds us what our attitude should be. Romans 14, “If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord, so whether we live or die we belong to the Lord.” Good stuff! I Peter 5:8, “Cast all your cares upon Him, because He cares for you.”

Take God up on the relationship He has given you in Jesus.  Jesus promises us in Matthew 11:28-29, “Come unto Me all you who are weary, and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest, even rest for your soul.”

 

Here’s the deal. Jesus says, “Your Father in heaven knows what you need even before you ask Him.”  All that stuff that the pagans run after: clothing , shoes, food, drink, house, home, spouse, children, land, animals, government, weather, health, protection, you name it; your Father in heaven knows that you need them. And Father knows best: when, where, how, and in what proportion to give it. You are died for. You are baptized into the family. You are a child of the heavenly Father. So Jesus says, “do not be afraid, for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom.” 

 

So how are we to deal with our worry? Rather than focusing our attention on our circumstances, focus your attention on Christ crucified and Christ risen; knowing that the Lord Who gave you nothing less than His entire kingdom as a free gift in Christ, will certainly take care of every need you have. Which is exactly what our Savior bids us in Matthew 6:33, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness, and all these other things will be given to you as well,” maybe not in the proportion that you want, but in the proportion that you need. When you realize, as the Scriptures tell us, ‘Nothing is impossible for God,’ and you look at everything in life through the lens of His Word: Psalm 37, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart,” Ephesians 3:20, “to Him Who is able to do immeasureably more, and all we can ask or imagine,” to Him Whose Word can still storms, feed 5,000 with 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish, open graves, and close hell, and when you focus your attention on the bread that is His body, and the wine that is His blood. These are anxiety-busting means of grace. These are the places where God promises you He is here for you!       Page   4

Yes, it is possible, that the hand that this gracious Savior deals you may mean Wal-Mart instead of Prada shoes, Goodwill instead of Gucci, and spaghetti with Ragu, rather than the Olive Garden; ‘But look at the birds of the sky, they neither sow, nor reap, nor store in barns, yet God feeds them, and how much more valuable you are than they.’

 

Faith clings to God’s promise to take care of His children, and He cannot go back on His promise to take care of you, because the Son of God bled to death on a cross, and God said right there we became His forgiven children, and He obligated Himself to take care of us. Our text says, “Do not be afraid, your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.’And all the other stuff of life is pocket change in comparison.

 

In our OT lesson, God promised Abraham a family, a nation, a land, and an offspring through whom the whole world would be blessed, when Abraham was 99 years old, his strength was dried up, his wife was barren, and his closest heir was a deadbeat relative name Eliezer. But Abraham believed God, instead of the circumstances of his life, and God delivered on His promise. And God credited righteousness to Abraham, simply for taking God at His Word. That’s the way of big faith, forgetting about being your own little god, and all the anxieties that come with it, and letting God be God, and holding Him to His promises.

 

Abraham left his comfortable home in the suburbs, to wander around in tents like a homeless person, and the best he ever got on this side of heaven, was one son through Sarah, and a burial plot in the Promised Land. Yet, he held God to be faithful. And Hebrews 11 says, “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised (in this life) but having seen them, and greeted them from afar.” The faithful understand that life is more than food, and the body more than clothing, it’s all about faith in dead and risen Jesus, trusting Him and His Word to forgive me, to take care of me in this life as He sees fit, and then to take me home to Heaven when I die. And when you realize that, it frees you from anxiety - which is the worship of our false gods, or the worship of ourselves to deliver the goods.

 

 

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Here’s the Gospel, Good News You can bank on:  “It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”  Forgiveness of sins, eternal life, salvation in Christ. It’s all yours. And the rest of that stuff that causes us so much anxiety; learn to hold it with a dead hand. “If we live we live to the Lord, if we died we die to the Lord, so whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord.” And even if life means hand-me-down clothes, bologna sandwiches, cheap chianti, and less than designer shoes; nevertheless, “Your Father has been pleased to give you His kingdom.” Amen!

 

And now, may the peace of God, which passes all human understanding, keep our hearts and minds in the one true faith, unto life everlasting. Amen.