Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Sam Morris teaches on how anxiety arises from relying on things other than God and shows that the cure is to fix our eyes and minds on Him. Using Matthew 6:25-34, he emphasizes God's provision for His creation and encourages seeking God's kingdom first to find peace beyond circumstances.
Bellevue Baptist Church Middle School Ministry
Tonight we're gonna be talking about anxiety and what the Bible says the cure for anxiety is. And so I want you to take a second and you can make a mental note or you can make a note in your journal or some talk sheets that we can get in just a second. But I want you to take a second, I want you to think about some things maybe that are making you anxious tonight as you come in. Some things that you're worried about, some things that have made you anxious. I want you to just take a second and think about that and then we'll hop into the word. So take just a second and do that. So as we go through these verses tonight, as we open up God's word, be thinking about those things and think about what God's word and what he's telling us about anxiety in his word. Think about how that applies to you and the things that you're anxious about tonight, okay? So if you have a Bible, let me see them, hold them up right here. Proud of you guys, it's awesome. Put it back in your lap and open up to Matthew 6. So tonight we are continuing in our series, Up on the Mount in Matthew 5-7, Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. If you don't have a talk sheet, Morgan and Connor and Ben, they're bringing them around if you need one. And so tonight we're gonna be talking about the cure for anxiety in Matthew 6. And so, like I said, as we walk through these verses tonight, think about the things that you wrote down or the things that you were thinking about that have been making you anxious as you come in tonight. And so let's read in Matthew 6, starting in verse 25. It says, therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air, they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to a span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you? Oh, you of little faith. Therefore do not be anxious saying, what shall we eat? Or what shall we drink? Or what shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek after all these things and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added to you. Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. And so I wanna do a little bit of Bible study tactic trivia. At the very beginning of verse 25, there's a word. What does it say? Says therefore, when you see therefore, what is the question that we are supposed to ask? Come on, that's what I'm talking about. What is it therefore? What it's telling us is to fully understand what Jesus says in the verses to follow. We have to go back and see what Jesus has already said. And so in verses 19 through 24, Jesus is reminding people not to set their eyes on the things of this world, not to set their mind on money. He's telling them to set their treasures in heaven. He's telling them that where their treasure is, there their heart will be also. The things that they are thinking about, the things that they are seeking after, the things that they are desiring, that is where their heart is gonna be. The affection of their heart is gonna be drawn to those things. He's reminding them that they cannot serve God and money. He's reminding them to keep their eyes and their minds on the things that are eternal, to set their eyes on heaven, to set their eyes on God and his kingdom. And so because our eyes should be fixed on the things of God that will not pass away, therefore, we should not be anxious about our lives. And so tonight we're gonna do something just a little bit different. I'm gonna give you our first point from these verses, the first thing that I want you to see, and then we're gonna take a little bit of time to discuss in groups, okay? And so I'm trusting you guys to talk about the questions that I'm gonna ask you, but I want you to have an opportunity to talk with the people around you about this topic. And so the first thing that I want you to see in verses 25 through 34 is that anxiety starts when we begin to rely on things other than God. Anxiety starts when we rely on things other than God. And so the two questions I have for you to discuss with the people who are around you is what are some things that we put our hope in that are not God? What are things that we try to rely on? What are the things that we try to surround ourselves with that are not God? And the second one is why do you think we believe these things will help us feel secure? So with the people who are around you, go ahead and take a second and talk about those two questions for just a couple of minutes. All right, Matthew chapter six, 25 through 30 says, therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you even Solomon in all of his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so closed the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you? Oh, you of little faith. Jesus tells us that we should not be anxious about our lives, that anxiety should not be something that defines us as a believer in Jesus. You know, we can experience seasons of being anxious, we can experience seasons of being worried about things, but it should not define who we are as believers in Jesus. And I wanna make something very, very clear. You are not a bad believer if you are in here tonight and you are experiencing anxiety. You are not a bad believer if you come in tonight and you feel distracted because there's so many things swirling around in your mind that you feel so anxious about. God is not mad about it. He's not looking down on you because of your anxiety, but he doesn't want you to live like that. Something that I have wrestled with my whole life is anxiety. I so easily, so easily can take my eyes off of who Christ is, who God is and what he has done. The fact that he provides so faithfully and I can get so anxious and I can just overthink and think of all of the what ifs. And so you're not alone in the struggle. I struggle with it all the time, but Jesus does not want us to live a life of anxiety. He wants us to live a life of faith and of trust in him. He doesn't want us to spiral. He doesn't want us to be faithless and walk from him. He wants us to walk in faith and trust, but it's when our faith becomes a little shaky. When we decide to take our eyes off of Jesus just a little bit, and we begin to drift to the things of this world, we look at all of the things, the things that you're mentioning that we can put our hope in that are not God. And we begin to fill our minds with the things of this world and our hearts are pulled away from God. The affection of our heart is pulled away from him. And that is the moment that we get very anxious. That's when we start to be anxious. That's when anxiety rears its head in our life. And so Jesus, to remind us of who he is and what he does, he points us to the birds. You guys bird watch? Anybody bird watch? Anybody like really into it? Hey, loud and proud, come on. Birds are fun to watch. I'm not gonna lie. I used to live up in Indiana and there were a ton of birds in our backyard. And so I would watch the birds. They're so interesting. They have like little things that they do every day. The songs that they sing are beautiful. And Jesus points us to the birds. He points us to the fact that they don't plant little farms. I never found a little farm in my backyard. They don't go out and toil in the field to harvest the crop. They don't gather crops into little barns in case the winter's really cold. Every day they go and they trust that for that day.
God is going to provide for them the food that they need and he does it, he does it. He then points us to the flowers and they are not worried about their appearance. I've never watched a flower look in the mirror and be like, should I wear this, should I not? I don't know, what if people don't like it? What if people think it's weird? They don't do that. They trust that God has adorned them with beauty that is beyond comparison. It says that the flowers are dressed with a beauty that even one of the richest men in the entire world in all of history, his clothes didn't even compare to their beauty. And that is a beauty that God has dressed them with. They don't chase fashion trends, they don't worry about what the world wants them to be or what they think they need to be. They know that how God made them is beautiful. And they're not anxious about it. They're trusting that God's purpose and the beauty that God has blessed them with is far more than they could ever muster themselves. Creation relies on the provision of God and we tend to lack the faith that the birds and the flowers have. We tend to not trust in the provision of God. We turn and we try to rely on money, on the people in our lives, on circumstances, on our talents, on the strengths that we have, on our own abilities. We try to rely on those things to meet our needs and the unfortunate thing is they fall short. And so we fall into this cycle of looking away from Jesus, having a lack of faith in him. And we have this reliance on other things and on ourselves. And then when those don't meet our needs, we fall into anxiety. And so when we are in anxiety, we have to ask the question, am I going to continue to let this draw me away from God? Am I gonna continue to let this produce in me a lack of faith? Or am I going to place my faith in Jesus knowing that he provides even for the birds and the flowers? How much more is he gonna provide for me? None of the things that we can look to will provide for us as well as God does. Anxiety is not a result of God's lack of provision. It is a result of our lack of faith. And so when we're anxious, it is because we need to be reminded of what Jesus is reminding us here, that he provides for the birds. That they don't toil, they don't struggle, they don't farm. They trust in God. Same with the flowers. They trust that God will provide for them. Points us to the tiny little birds and the delicate little flowers of the field, and how much more is he going to care for us? We are his children. He is our father. It says, how much more will your heavenly father provide for you? He loves us as his children. And so the question is, will we fix our eyes on him instead of trying to place our faith in everything else? Are we going to look to him and fix our eyes on him and allow him to be the one that provides for us, to give us peace? Because if we look for our sustenance and our provision in anything else, it's gonna cause us to be anxious. And so just like a cold, anxiety is kind of like a sickness that sucks the energy right out of your life, and it makes you ineffective for what God wants you to do. Anxiety is like a sickness, and when you have a sickness, when you have a cold, you seek a cure. And so the cure that we find in these verses is that anxiety is cured by fixing our eyes and our minds on God. Verse 33 and 34 says, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. The cure to anxiety is to set our mind on God, to fix our eyes on Jesus, to set our mind and our eyes on the kingdom of God and his righteousness, to seek first the kingdom. So my question is, what are you setting your mind on? What are you thinking about? And so we're gonna enter another time of discussion, and these are the two questions that I want you to talk about. What are the things that you think about the most? The things that take up the most brain space in your skull. What are the things you think about the most? And the second question is, why do you think about them? Why do you think about them? Take a second and talk about those two questions with the people who are around you. Something that Pastor Ben has said several times in some of his sermons recently, and even to our staff here at Bellevue, is what you focus on gets bigger. What you focus on gets bigger. So the things that you spend a lot of time thinking about ends up being the things that you spend more and more time thinking about, right? Because when you focus on it, it becomes the main thing that's taking space in your mind. You know, if I think about, if I stub my toe, then for like the next little bit, I'm gonna think about my stubbed toe, and the more I think about my stubbed toe, the more it's gonna hurt, and the more it hurts, the more I'm gonna think about my stubbed toe, right? So the more we focus on something, the bigger it can get in our life. And so when we focus on the worries that we have, they get bigger. They seem like a bigger deal. They seem a lot scarier. When we focus on the struggles that we face, they get bigger in our minds. They become a bigger and bigger deal. And we can become more and more anxious about those things. And so anxiety is an indicator that we have taken our eye off the ball. Like I said, we've taken our eye off the ball. We've turned our eyes from God and his kingdom, and we are now focusing on something else, and it is getting bigger and bigger and bigger in our minds. And what that immediately makes me think of is Peter. It makes me think of Peter when he sees Jesus walking on the water, and he looks to him and he says, all right, Jesus, if it's really you, let me step out of the boat and walk on the water with you. And so Jesus says, all right, dude, come on. And so in faith, Peter steps out of the boat, out onto the waves, out onto the water, and he's walking with Jesus. And so he's walking with Jesus. He's talking with Jesus, this incredible miracle. I mean, I have no idea what my reaction would be if I was out walking on the water with Jesus. And all of a sudden, as his eyes were on Jesus, they started to drift, and he started to look at the clouds of the storm that was going on. He started to look to the waves that were crashing. He started to notice how hard the wind was blowing, and he took his eyes off Jesus, and he began to sink. And so a lot of us, we tend to fix our eyes firmly on the things all around us that are worrying, that are scary, the things that make us anxious. And some of those things really are big and scary things. But if we will fix our eyes on Jesus, he will make those things pale in comparison because he will provide for us. We lose sight of the fact that Jesus is right there in front of us with grace and a hope for us to cling on to. He will not let us be swept away by the sea in the same way that he didn't let Peter. The cure for our struggle with anxiety is to seek first the kingdom of God, to fix our eyes firmly on Jesus. And that doesn't mean that when we put our eyes on Jesus and we look to him and we ask him to help us, that suddenly everything in our life is gonna be fixed. And that everything that was making me anxious is no longer gonna be around, and that's why I'm not anxious. There's still gonna be trouble. There's still gonna be hard things that we walk through. But with our eyes on Jesus, he reminds us that he's got us, that he's holding us tightly, and he's going to take care of us. The difficulties that we face will pale in comparison to the provision that God gives us. With our focus on God and our trust in him, we can take those worries to him and ask him to help. Philippians 4, verses four through seven says, rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. The peace doesn't come when our circumstances change. The peace doesn't come when everything is solved. The peace comes when we put our eyes on Jesus and we ask him to step into the situation and to help us. The peace comes when we place our trust and our faith and our hope in him, that he is going to take care of us. When we put our trust in him and believe whatever happens, we believe that God has it taken care of.
Proverbs 3, verses 5 and 6. If you've been around the church, you know it well. It says, trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him and He will make straight your paths. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all of these things will be added to you. Set your eyes and your mind on Him and He will take care of the rest. He will take care of you. Just like the birds and just like the flowers, He will take care of you. And so we become anxious when we lose sight of that. We become anxious when we lose sight of the fact that God has us and He's going to take care of us. So the cure to it is not to have all of our things solved, not to have everything fixed. The cure to anxiety is to turn our eyes back to Jesus who is our hope, who is our peace, who is the one who will take care of us. And so as you begin to lose sight of who Jesus is and what He's done and you start to rely on things other than God as your hope in this life, when you do this, you will find yourself anxious and fearful. But we have a God who loves us so, so deeply and it is a joy for Him to give us what we need. And so as we wrap up this time in God's word tonight, I want you to take a second and reflect on what you've heard. I want you to take a second and reflect on this passage. And I want you to take a time that's quiet and a time with the Lord to ask Him to reveal to you what it is that you should do in your own life with this. And so maybe you need to take a second and there's something in your life that you haven't trusted Him with. There's something that's just burning a hole in the back of your mind that you're just so anxious about. You're so worried about. Take a second and trust Him with it. Pray and ask Him to take care of that. Maybe you've experienced His peace that surpasses all understanding and the Lord has just shown you His presence and His provision even in the midst of something hard. Give Him praise for that. Ask Him to help you to trust Him. Ask Him to help you to put your faith in Him in a new way or maybe for the first time. Maybe you've never placed your faith in Jesus. You've never asked Him to forgive you of your sins. And so I want you to close your eyes. Everybody close your eyes. And I want you to think about those things. Take a second with the Lord and ask Him what He wants you to take away from what we've talked about tonight. Take a second, reflect on it. And in a minute, I'm gonna pray and then we're gonna worship together, okay? Father God, thank you so much that you provide for us. That as your children, you love us, you give us what we need, you take care of us. Lord, thank you for giving us the picture of the birds and the flowers. Even though they're so small and in our day-to-day life, we can completely miss them. We don't even think about them that often. Lord, I thank you that you provide for them. And Lord, it is in abundance that you provide for us. You provide for us so much more. Lord, thank you for providing us with an opportunity to know you. Lord, thank you for dying on the cross for our sins. Lord, that you showed us that grace, that mercy we don't deserve. God, that if we would just put our faith and our trust in you, that we would confess our sins to you. Lord, that you forgive us, you wash us clean. Lord, that's the ultimate provision that you've given us. Lord, thank you that you provide for us in the little ways, in the day-to-day things. And so, God, I pray that we would fix our eyes on you, that we would set our minds on your kingdom, on your righteousness. And Lord, that you would help us to trust you more and more every day. Lord, that you'd give us your peace. And thank you that we can bring our requests to you and that you promise that when we do, that you will give us your peace that surpasses all understanding. And so, Lord, I pray tonight that if there is any student who's experiencing anxiety tonight, they're fearful, God, I pray that they would trust you and you would give them your peace. Lord, thank you for that. I pray that you'd be with us as we worship. It's in Jesus' name I pray, amen.