Why Worry? God’s in Charge!

the following message by aleister begg is made available by truth for life for more information visit us online at truthforlife.org if you care to follow along in the pew bibles and you're unfamiliar with where luke's gospel is then if you turn to page 737 you'll be right there page 737 luke chapter 12 and verse 22. then jesus said to his disciples therefore i tell you 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 more than clothes consider the ravens 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 who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life since you cannot do this very little thing why do you worry about the rest consider how the lilies grow they do not labor or spin yet i tell you not even solomon in all his spread splendor was dressed like one of these if that is how god clothes the grass of the field which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire how much more will he clothe you o you of little faith and do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink do not worry about it for the pagan world runs after all such things and your father knows that you need them but seek his kingdom and these things will be given to you as well do not be afraid little flock for your father has been pleased to give you the kingdom sell your possessions and give to the poor provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted where no thief comes near and no moth destroys for where your treasure is there your heart will be also you keep your bibles open there as we look at this passage together father i pray for your help now the clarity that is necessary in speaking and thinking the sense of your presence which we cannot create but we certainly covet that you will grant brevity with clarity and that you will open our hearts to receive your truth for jesus sake amen jesus here is giving instruction to his disciples he has addressed the crowd he's told the story of the rich fool and now he says directly to his disciples i want to tell you not to worry about your lives the word which is used here for worry the root meaning of it means to divide when we worry when we allow ourselves to go down that road then we are drawn in different directions one of the things that happens with worrying is that we are just not exactly sure how we're placed or where we're headed our thoughts are divided they become distracted and it actually has a debilitating effect upon us it makes it difficult for us to complete even ordinary tasks and particularly in the matter of discipleship it prevents the kind of wholehearted devotion which jesus looks for in those who are his followers worry in its extreme expressions is discovered in certain individuals lives when they find themselves almost literally paralyzed by a sense of panic the kind of thing that may strike like lightning it comes absolutely without warning and without any apparent explanation and individuals tell me that they find themselves absolutely neutralized in a moment in time it may be in circumstances that are very familiar to them it may be in walking down the ramp to get on a plane it may be in the course of taking a test there's just no explanation for it at all and this dreadful sense of overwhelming panic seizes their hearts and minds that kind of extreme dimension is not generally known and yet the fact is that worry is something that we all face anxiety fear is commonplace and it would seem just from observation that living on the edge of the 21st century there is plenty of cause for worry we're talking with someone this morning we were remarking on the fact that life is increasingly rootless that you ask people where are they from and they will often have a difficult time telling you where they're from because they're not sure where they're from they've either been so many places or where they were was a bad experience and they don't want to associate with that they associate with somewhere else and what they're giving testimony to is a sense of disconnectedness and as more and more communities dissolve in our society individuals feel and legitimately so that they need somehow or another to find means of coping with circumstances that are increasingly bleak and if you have not encountered this in conversation with others then you must be moving in a very strange group of individuals at the same time political structures are fragile at best violence is not decreasing people feel themselves increasingly trapped and powerless and the words of paul simon from the 60s ring out with clarity no matter if you're born to play the king or pawn for the line is thinly drawn between joy and sorrow and so my fantasy becomes reality and i must be what i must be and face tomorrow and so i'll continue to continue to pretend that my life will never end and that flowers never bend with the rainfall in other words i will push these notions of anxiety and fear and worry as far back as i possibly can and modern society is comprised of individuals who are drifting like corks on the ocean unsure just what it is that moves them these deep irresistible currents that they cannot quite explain and so they laugh at themselves when trudy the bag lady created by michelle wagner given life by lily tomlin stands on the stage of the west end in new york and as a bag lady she says i worry where tonight fits in the cosmic scheme of things i worry there is no cosmic scheme of things now it is in that context that we live and as we live in this environment so we move into this first century environment and jesus speaking to his disciples in his day gives them a word which is immediately applicable to them and surprisingly or not surprisingly we find that 2 000 years later it rings out with tremendous clarity and he's calling his disciples to do two things first to face the facts and secondly to put first things first and i want you simply to notice both those headings with me in the time that i have before we share in the baptisms first of all then face the facts now the underlying fact we saw last time in verse 15 where jesus at the end of verse 15 points out to his listeners a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions in other words life is not defined by what you have even when you have a lot so the idea of saying i can make sense of my life by what i've provided for myself or what i'm able to show to others that i have jesus says that's a bad idea to think that way because your existence your soul the part of you that lives forever is not actually identified and made sense of by means of these material things and it is in light of that principle there that fact in verse 15 a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions that jesus has first of all warned his disciples against greed and covetousness and now he flips to the other side and he says therefore then jesus said to his disciples therefore in other words in light of what i've been saying to you you shouldn't be greedy and let me turn it over the other way and say to you and you shouldn't worry because the root cause of greediness and worry is the same they both emerge from a failure to trust god and the connection is clear since life does not depend upon stuff jesus says it's a dumb idea to worry about stuff secondly he makes it clear and this is the second fact fact one our lives do not consist in the abundance of our possessions fact two worry is a fact of life worry is a fact of life and not just for the pagan world but for the believer also jesus is not here addressing a theoretical situation he's not giving them extraneous instruction he's not telling them about something that they that they don't know anything of and so in verse 22 he says do not worry in verse 25 he says does worrying work in verse 26 he says why do you worry now that ought to be an immediate encouragement to some of us who have been tyrannizing ourselves because of the fact that we worry and we decided that if you were a genuine christian you wouldn't worry at all here jesus is speaking to those who actually live with him sleep with him listen to them and he says i got to talk to you about something here i want to talk to you about the problem of worry not something that is unknown to them something that is experienced by them now we find the same all the way through the new testament paul when he writes to the philippians remember what he says to them in philippians 4 6 don't worry about anything when peter writes to the scattered believers of his day he says i want you to cast all of your anxieties all of your worries all of your concerns upon god who cares for you the samist is honest enough to make frequent reference to both fear and anxiety and his assertion is not i never struggle with fear rather psalm 56 3 when i am afraid i put my trust in you okay so he's not saying that i don't know what it is to be afraid i don't know what it is to be anxious i don't know what it is to worry but instead of the bible assuming that christ's followers will have no worries it tells us how to deal with them when they threaten to undo us now the way in which jesus does this is very straightforward he issues a call to his disciples to think that's the significance of the word consider the verb at the beginning of verse 24 and again at the beginning of verse 27 consider the ravens and consider all of these lovely flowers he says now the word consider means look pay attention perceive think it out and so he provides them with facts in order that they might then order their thinking on the basis of what is true most of our worries have to do with allowing our minds to be ordered by thinking that is untrue i think it was mark twain who said i have had many troubles in my life most of them i have never experienced you die a thousand deaths in fearing one fact number three and i'm simply reiterating the text since god created your life and your body says jesus and since your life and your body are more and more significant than food and clothes you ought to recognize that having given you a body he's not going to fail to clothe it or to feed it think it out he says if the creator went to the extent of making you so that you could live life do you think having made you he would then drop out at the point where you needed food and clothes it's so straightforward even a child would answer it fourthly he says god looks after the birds and you're more valuable than birds verse 24 remember i've suggested to you in the past you may want to put that on your cv on the next time you suggesting uh the significance that you have for somebody who's trying to employ you don't forget to put in luke chapter 12 24 be i am much more valuable than birds i can guarantee you it will probably get you a call back just so that somebody can ask what in the world is that about it may be the key to you getting a job you never know write to me and tell me if you're successful but certainly if you put that on an application that you were sending to me i am more uh what what have you done in your life and where are your degrees and where have you been i said p.s i am much more valuable than birds i had either throw it in the trash or i'd phone you up immediately and say what's your problem fifthly he says you can't add height or time to your life there is some question as to whether the niv translates it correctly or whether king james translates it correctly or just who translates it correctly some translated as a time reference others translated as a height reference it works either way which of you by worrying can grow to the size of michael jordan any child can answer none which of you by worrying can extend the length of your life answer none some old fellow once said that worry is like sitting in a rocking chair it gives you something to do but it won't get you anywhere at all that's the point that jesus is making sixthly he says despite the brief lifespan of flowers we're in verse 27 now despite the brief lifespan of flowers god still makes them absolutely beautiful and so he's going to take care of you as well it's not one of the great statuses of flowers you wish you could keep them forever someone gives you beautiful flowers and you know that as soon as you put them in a vas it's going to be only days before you have to take them out and throw them away again it's a tremendous it's a tremendous effort on the part of the creator is it not to create such phenomenal beauty that is going to have such a trency and fleeting uh time before our gaze and jesus says think about it you look out and you see the flowers and they are absolutely beautiful the 10 best dressed people in the universe couldn't even come close to looking as wonderful as these flowers do god makes the flowers absolutely beautiful do you think he's not going to give you what you need seventhly he points out that the root of worry is the absence of trust at the end of verse 28 one little phrase oh you of little faith you see when the disciples worried what they were saying was god you can't be trusted in this situation that's what worry really is god you cannot be trusted in this situation and there are many places to which we might turn the most obvious that will come to many of your minds is when they're they are on the boat in the middle of the lake the storm comes jesus is asleep in the stern he's on a pillow they wake him up to inform the creators of the universe that we're all about to drown including him and jesus stands up and he rebukes the winds and the waves there's an immediate calm and they look at one another and he says what manner of man is this that even the winds and the waves obey him now when troubles overwhelm us when circumstances emerge in our lives as we follow christ in many of these circumstances we cannot routinely get out of them or get rid of them right i mean the circumstance itself let's say it's illness let's say it is a bad working situation let's say it's a breakdown in a precious relationship or a friendship and the circumstance itself we cannot extricate ourselves from it is clear that we're going to have to experience the circumstance the issue is not getting out of or getting rid of that which troubles me but what we can and not to get rid of is the worry that accompanies the circumstance and that is what jesus is pointing out now may i just say in passing something i've noticed and i i this is uh just an observation passing for what it's worth and i'm not sure i can even substantiate this from the bible so i'm really going out on a limb i actually think that some of our worries are so childish and so selfish and such a product of luxury that far from taking the time and taking god's time to cast them upon him we ought simply to banish them from our hearts you will have experienced this if you have ever traveled in third world countries when you find yourself in the heart for example of uh liberia miles and miles away from any kind of electricity or any kind of roadways in a circumstance where it is mud and corrugated roofs where it is just abject chaos and frustration in comparison to all that we know here people who are walking miles just to get water people who are getting bamboo out of the jungles in order to make jacks to bring up their car so that they can change a tire people who have to walk to the firestone factory for 17 miles with a with a puncture you know they don't have any time for some of our luxurious narcissistic worries i mean they just don't have enough time in the day to worry about whether the wallpaper goes all the way to the ceiling or not they don't have enough time to worry about whether the left shoe matches the right shoe or whether my hair is the right way it's supposed to be for this most significant occasion and when you hear some of us talk about the things that we're all so worried about you say i'm not sure i would go to god with that one i think you ought to get rid of that before ever you start your prayer time sure we can go to him with everything but that doesn't mean we shoot he's a gracious god and he can tolerate all sorts of stuff but i think there's a lot of stuff we need to nip in the butt oh i'm so worried as i think about this and i think about that my kitchen tile you know it's just it's just not coming in the way i expected it to fine now you're sensible people you need to face the facts yourself all he's doing here is iterating these facts so he's saying to them i want you to consider these things and think it out face the facts and then he says put first things first first things first verse 31 the principle seek his kingdom and these things will be given to you as well well you might paraphrase it by saying you take care of my things and i'll take care of your things in other words let us give up on the side of fear and let's move into the realm of faith let us recognize that god is capable for all of our circumstances and don't let's allow ourselves to be so proud as to assume that we've actually found something here that god is unable to cope with now you see this is the absolute reverse of the contemporary approach to the problem of worry if you listen to contemporary psychology and its attempts at dealing with worry if you listen to people talk in our communities and simply listen as uh you are overhearing people in the airport you hear this kind of thing you know i'm really anxious about this and i'm anxious about that there doesn't seem to be very much around me that provides a secure foothold there's nothing that's really external to me that i can lay hold of and lean upon these people are essentially saying and so i've decided that i will trust the only one that i can trust and i will take refuge in the only one in whom i can take refuge and who's that myself you doubt it for what is a man what has he got if not himself then he has not to say the things he truly feels and not the voice of one who yields the record shows i took the blows i did it my way. that is as classic a mantra of the bridge between the 20th and the 21st century as any that is expressive of our culture and so you've got all these people paralyzed by fear anxious about life rootless in their geography disparate in their relationships and when it all crumbles around them the psychologists tell them the only retreat you have is run into yourself and since they sleep with themselves they know what a horrible suggestion that is because the same self into which they're supposed to crawl is the self that wakes them up in the night and they lie looking up at the ceiling overwhelmed by the circumstances of their days that's why jesus does the absolute reverse he said look away from yourself seek first the kingdom in other words bow before the king jesus acknowledge that he is sovereign over the affairs of time that he is master over our destiny that he knows our names that he sees each tear that falls that he hears us when we call now you see this is so very important when we're thinking about witnessing to our neighbors and friends as well when our friends and neighbors give expression to their worries and to their fears i hope none of us are smartiepens enough or smug enough or silly enough to suggest that we know nothing of what they're describing right so the person says you know i'm so anxious about this and we say oh anxious are you oh that's a that's a dreadful thing anxiety no there's no no i'm not anxious someone says i'm so worried about my appointment tomorrow i said worried i can't believe you're worried you know if you were like me you wouldn't worry if you if you knew luke 12 you wouldn't worry no if you knew first peter 5 7 you wouldn't worry and so goes on and it's absolutely no help at all to the person because first of all they've concluded that we don't know what we're talking about then we're not even living in the real world that we've never had an experience that rocked us back in our heels and this somehow or another we are immune to the rigors of life that is not christianity that is falsehood there isn't a single person in this room tonight can stand up and say they know nothing about worry everybody knows what it is to worry everybody knows what it is to be fearful everybody knows what it is to be anxious that's why jesus has to teach his disciples about the subject if it was alien to them then why would he give them instructions about not worrying and ask them what is the prophet in worrying and suggests to them that they take a course in looking out on the universe and realizing the fatherly care of god when you're driving down the road and it's coming very soon in fact before you get driving down the road in a matter of days from now probably we will have the traditional uh chilling cutting experience of going out to our cars and saying oh no here we go and saying i should have listened to my wife when she said put the scraper in the boot put the scraper in the trunk one of these days you're going to need it and i said not yet i don't need it and then i'm out there with a credit card scraping scraping the windscreen like a strange man to get all of the ice off and then the second thing is i should have paid attention when she said now don't drive past the bp again get some of that blue stuff in the bottle and he said oh the blue stuff in the bottle there's plenty of time for that and so now we're down to our fingernails scraping the windscreen now we have no blue stuff in the bottle now we start off on the street now we start the windscreen wipers going the windscreen wipers simply move the ice around a little bit and then they get a fiendishly impervious little piece and they just go and it annoys you like fury and you want to get out of the traffic lights but you can't time it enough to run out and scrape and then get back in and so it just is there and it says right i know you got this picture now okay this is a metaphor when the windscreen of our life ices up thus making it difficult for us to see and to make forward progress and to prevent ourselves from hazard and disaster we need to say to our neighbors and friends not our windscreen never rised up that's not true we need to be able to tell them about what we have learned about god in his word so as we have a methodology for dealing with the iced out windscreen and what is it well it is actually the solvent of the word of god itself and it is the work of the spirit of god to bring the solvent of the word of god into the iced up windscreen of our lives so when our friends ask a reason for the hope that we have when we've been honest enough to tell them that when we sat in the doctor's office and he went out into the corridor taking the pathology report and we knew that he was talking to one of his colleagues and we wish we could hear out the door but we were frightened to open it and we were pretty sure that if we opened it we wouldn't know what he was saying in any case that we were honest enough to say to our friends that scared me speedless i stood in that room and i looked out the window and i imagined that there was no tomorrow and the friend then says to us so what did you do at that point i scooched the windscreen with what with the word of god i reminded myself god you are sovereign in this circumstance god you know this report god you walk this earth in jesus now i want to suggest to your loved ones that this will give us great credibility then in speaking to our friends because what they don't need to know is that we've never had the windscreen isa they need to know that we have but they don't know about the solvent and what we need to tell them is about the cross of the lord jesus christ that's actually where we go because it is the cross which ultimately arrests my fears because my greatest sense of worry is what and what is theirs although they don't know it it is the fact that god has said eternity in my heart and i know that i'm going to live forever somewhere and i know that i have an appointment with the living god and i'm pretty dead certain that if the appointment was tonight i won't be able to face the appointment i'll have to go to it and i'll have nothing to say that's why i feel alienated that's why i feel disconnected that's why i can't make sense of the jigsaw that's why i look up at the ceiling and wonder instead of a bunch of silly stuff you know platitudes and pious kind of statements and little notes quotes and anecdotes take them the only place that's worth taking them take them to the cross they say well why would i go to the cross because you need a savior you see your alienation and your sense of ruthlessness is actually because there is a ruthlessness that comes as a result of our being disconnected from god who made us now friends said well i never understood that you say no i know you didn't i didn't myself and then you just go through the material from this morning the historical jesus the theological significance the offer of forgiveness and a fresh new start and a brand new power and a whole new life and a heart transplant and the person says well does that mean you never worry anymore who says oh no you still worry but the difference now is you understand that worry at his base is a sinful failure to trust our father it is futile it is unnecessary it is debilitating but it is normal and therefore we need to go to him so we tell them that the christian life is not a life free from worry but when we ice up then we turn to the solvent see of god's truth let me tell you how i do it and i'll just give you these and i'm going to wrap it up when i'm worried about my complete sense of weakness i squirt on 2 corinthians 12 9. you're all looking now for 2 corinthians 12 9 right that's fine that's your homework my grace is sufficient for you for my strength is made perfect in weakness so paralyzed by the worry i won't be able to cope i won't be able to do this i'm not capable of this squirt on the solvent when i'm worried about my preaching being absolutely useless and amounting to nothing as you go sunday by sunday by sunday and think to yourself that the only reason you're still in the ministry is because otherwise you're completely unemployable i squirt on the solvents of isaiah 55 11 that it is the word of god which never returns empty but always accomplishes the purpose that he has established for it and i give myself a kick in the seat of the pants forever intruding in the process as if somehow or another i was significant in it when i am worried about dying i squirt on the solvency of romans 14 and i remind myself that i don't live to myself and i don't die to myself and i squirt on the solvency of romans 8 and there's neither death nor life nor angels nor demons or principalities nor powers nor nakedness nor peril nor sword can separate me from the love of god that is in christ jesus our lord and so i say okay let's take all that i'm feeling over here and let's counterbalance it with all the weight of the wonder of the solvency of this when i'm worried about making shipwreck of my faith then i squirt on the solvents solvent of philippians 1 6 i am confident that he who has begun a good work in you will bring it to completion of the day of jesus christ you see that's a lot more sensible more sensible approach i suggest to you than this silly nonsense about somehow we live above it all you know no we don't experience this oh icing up no we don't ice up that kind of repression will put you in a home where they turn the door on you and you stay in there for a long time the perspective is wonderful that's why he moves and he says verse 32 don't be afraid little flock he says so gentle isn't it the kind of words of a shepherd he looks at this group and he says you know you don't look like much i know you're just a little flock you're just a weak group of guys don't be afraid little flock he says i know you look apparently ineffective the father's plans for you are glorious so instead of hoarding and coveting and being like the guy in the parable i just told you instead of worrying about whether you've got enough or if you move it on if you can keep enough or what you do with your stuff he says instead of doing that don't hoard give be prepared to be outlandish in your generosity sell stuff as it seems necessary give it to the poor get a bank you can bank on put your treasure in that bank because the place where your treasure is is the place where you'll most want to be and it's actually the place where you're going to end up face the facts first things first seeking his kingdom i don't have time to unpack that for you but i'll tell you this and with this i draw to a close if i'm going to seek the kingdom of god i'm seeking god's control over every aspect of my life god is not interested christ is not interested in becoming second in command in your army he's not interested in co-partnership in a duplex he's not interested in riding in the back seat of a car of your life he is king and lord and seeks the throne of your heart and one of the reasons for worry in my life is when i am tempted to re-take areas of my existence back into my own domain and sometimes it's almost as if he lets me so that he can say to me again you see what a dumb idea that is now let me sit back up here where i should be seeking god's control over me and seeking god's character in me wilbur chapman on one occasion was in london he wanted to go and meet william booth of the salvation army the man who founded the salvation army because he had seen the tremendous impact of the salvation army and he wanted to ask booth one question and he did he asked him he said william booth what is the secret of your impact and your influence and he recounts how as booth began to reply tears began to form in his eyes and he said to chapman i will tell you what the secret is god has had all of me there have been men with greater brains men with greater opportunities but from the day i got the poor of london on my heart and a vision of what christ could do with these men i made up my mind that god would have all of william booth there was have you made up your mind that god will have all of you that there is if there is anything of power in the salvation army today he said it is because god has all the adoration of my heart god has all the power of my will god has all the influence of my life all your anxieties all your care bring to the mercy seat and leave them there never a burden he cannot bear and never a friend like jesus and though our sins be a scarlet he'll make them white as snow though they are red like crimson they will be his wool he'll press the delete key and eradicate from our record everything that holds us in tyranny not letting us off but bearing our punishment in order that we may go free face the facts put first things first father out of an abundance of words we pray that we might hear your word and as we bring our day to a close and as we listen to the words of others who will speak we pray that you will simply confirm what you've been saying to us throughout the hours of this day and if it please you that you will add to your church those who are being saved receive our evening offerings as we bring them in christ's name amen this message was brought to you from truth for life where the learning is for living to learn more about truth for life with alistair begg visit us online at truthforlife.org

Channel: Alistair Begg

Views: 41,798

Rating: 4.9026289 out of 5

Keywords: Anxiety, Worry

Id: uU4ucQtMzHk

Length: 38min 11sec (2291 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 17 2021