Sermon on The Mount | Week One

Chris Pepper preaches on the Sermon on the Mount, focusing on Matthew 6:25-34 as the cure for anxiety. He emphasizes trusting God by considering and observing how God cares for birds and wildflowers, showing God's provision and love, which encourages believers to cast their worries on Him.

Show Notes

Chris Pepper starts a new series for Exit 15 by preaching on The Sermon on The Mount out of Matthew Chapter Six verses 25 through 34. He talks about how these verses are the cure to the listener's anxiety and worries of the future. He tells listeners to look at the world around them, specifically the birds and plants. These things demonstrate his love to care for all his creations, including those listening.

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Bellevue Baptist Church High School Ministry

Evening, guys. Y'all doing good? No? Hey, that was such a great time of worship. I was moved by that. I could hear you, and I could hear you loud. Owen doesn't typically stop singing with his voice unless he knows that he can hear yours, and he did that multiple times because you were singing to God, and I appreciated that greatly. I'm shaken tonight because I'm going to do something I've never done and that I'm very afraid of. I was sitting in that chair over there, and as we were worshiping, and I was thinking through the sermon that I have prepared, I felt very strongly that God would like for me to demonstrate trust in Him by not using my notes at all. I've never done that before in full transparency. That makes me very scared. This is not because I didn't prepare. I'm going to show you. I manuscript my entire sermon every time. There are six pages of manuscript. This took nine hours to write. This is not because I am not prepared. It is because I strongly feel as though that is what God would have me do. So I don't know how long we're gonna go or how short we're gonna go tonight. I don't entirely know what God is gonna lead me to say. I'm preaching on the exact same thing I wrote, but I am going to take a step of faith in that because I feel that if I'm gonna tell you to trust God like Matthew 6 tells us to do, then there are some things that I also need to do to make sure that I am modeling that. These past, I don't know, month and a half or so, month, I have been feeling a great deal of angst, and I'm preaching on the cured for anxiety tonight. As I was writing this passage, I felt convicted because I felt like I did not always model this in my own life, that I'm gonna talk to you about what it looks like to trust Jesus with everything, and yet I myself am struggling to do that even now. There are days where I am terrified of the future, where it cripples me sometimes, and so I'm gonna take a moment tonight, and I'm gonna put some faith in God and do something I've never done, and if I do great, it's because God was a part of it, and if I do poorly, it's because I'm just not that good, okay? So here's what I'm gonna ask us to do. I'm gonna pray over our night, and I'm gonna pray over this message, and then I'm gonna ask you to dial in, because I really do believe that God has something for us here tonight, but it's only gonna be there if you pay close attention. So let's pray together. God, I beg you to move tonight. God, I beg you to show up in a way that I've never seen you show up before. God, I beg you to speak to these students in a way that pierces their hearts and their minds, and in a way that transforms them forever. God, I am but a lowly servant, and I am here to deliver the message that I believe that you have for me, so would you speak through me tonight as I take a step of trust in you? In your name, amen. Well, last week, me and our team, we spent some time talking to you about how we share the gospel, some ways that we like to share the gospel, some things that have worked for us historically, and then in the weeks prior to that, we've been talking about neighboring, right? We did, I think, three or four weeks on neighboring, and this week I get the privilege, because Camden is gone, it's kind of like in a lot of churches on Easter Sunday, the senior pastor is like on vacation, or the Sunday after Easter, sorry, the senior pastor's on vacation, the youth pastor gets to preach, it's kind of how I feel this week. It's like, oh, Camden's out, I get to preach. And so I'm gonna kick us off on our series in the Sermon on the Mount, and tonight my title is The Cure. We're gonna be reading Matthew 6, verses 25 through 34. I'd love it if we could get those verses on the screen, because I don't have my notes anymore, so I'm gonna read them off the screen. Matthew 6, verses 25 through 34. Yes, somebody shouted for that, are we not excited about the scripture we're reading tonight? There you go. This passage is very near and dear to my heart, because I have read it and studied it probably more than any other passage that I've ever read. This passage has done more for me in my walk with God and in my battle with anxiety than any other passage or any other sermon or any other person has ever done for me. But there's one challenge with it. There's a very, it's a common passage because it makes a very, very, very powerful statement. It is titled The Cure for Anxiety. That is a, that's like, I mean, that's like the Holy Grail. I mean, this is one of the things that we as humanity struggle with more than almost anything else, and this passage is claiming, Jesus is claiming in this passage that the cure is held within these nine verses, that this treasure trove is held within these nine verses. That is a enormous, enormous claim. And as the result of that, this passage is very, very, very common. It is circulated around the Christian world all the time. That's a good thing. The issue that I've had historically with it is that because it is circulated so much, there's a lot of interpretations and understandings of it that aren't necessarily wrong, but aren't the full picture either. There's a very common understanding that we're going to talk about in just a little bit of this passage that is partially true, but it isn't the main point. And if we view it as the main point, it actually messes up the whole picture that Jesus is trying to tell us. So I want us to read it together. So if you're in it, you can turn to it, you can look to the screens with me. I want us to read this together, and we'll jump in. This is what Jesus says. He says, And why do you worry about clothes? Observe how the wildflowers of the field grow. They don't labor or spin thread. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon, in all of his splendor, was adorned like one of these. If that's how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won't he do much more for you, you of little faith? So don't worry, saying, what will we eat, or what will we drink, or what will we wear? For the Gentiles eagerly seek 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 provided for you. Therefore don't worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. The most common understanding of this that I have heard, I've heard this preached many a time, the most common understanding of this that I have heard is that the the cure for anxiety that Jesus speaks of is found in verse 33, when he says, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you. The understanding is that, okay, the cure for anxiety is seeking the kingdom of God, because when I do, the things that I'm worried about will be provided, and I won't have to worry about them anymore. But there's a huge glaring problem there. See the passage beforehand, the passage right before this, I don't have it up on the screens, but in Matthew 5, or no, it's still 6, but it's right before, Jesus talks about God and possessions, and he basically tells you that you cannot serve both God and money. Here's where the rub happens here. If I'm worried because I don't have enough money for a new car, and then God provides a car, but it's not a very good car, then I'm probably gonna worry about whenever that car is gonna break down. Or if I'm worried that I don't have enough food for the month, or enough money for food for the month, and then God provides food for the month, I'm probably gonna worry again next month. Worry and anxiety and fear is the root problem. The actual possession or thing that I'm worried about isn't the root problem, and that means that when it comes, when God provides that thing, if I have not dealt with the root of anxiety, then it won't actually cure the problem. All it's gonna do is, I'm gonna worry about the next thing. I'm gonna be a lover of money, I'm gonna serve money, and not God, because I'm constantly afraid of the next thing to be afraid of. It's why it says that each day has enough trouble of its own. There's always something else to worry about. So that's the most common understanding and most common teaching of that passage, and I'm not knocking any pastors that have taught that. I've just spent so much time in this passage because I've been eagerly seeking, what is the cure for anxiety? And this is the conclusion that I've come to. This is what I want to talk to you about today. I want us to look at verse 26. It says, consider the birds of the sky. They don't sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren't you worth more than they? I did some research. That word consider in the Greek is the word katamanthano. I don't know if I said that right. You don't either, so I guess it doesn't matter. It's the word katamanthano. Katamanthano essentially means to consider very carefully, to observe closely. It basically means to study something. Like, I'm so familiar with this thing that I know much about it. It doesn't just mean, oh, I consider, I think about sometimes, or I've thought about once or twice. It's like, I'm pretty, I'm an expert at this thing. And Jesus is, in this case, saying to do that with birds. So I did some research on birds using Chat GPT. I said, tell me everything that you can possibly tell me about birds. And I just got, just word vomit on the GPT. And some of the things that I discovered is that birds are almost entirely, and I mean like entirely reliant on God for their survival. They work, they go out and get their food, and lots of different birds and bird types do different things to get their food. Right, just how we do different things to earn our money. But they are like super, super reliant on God.

Like if God's ecosystem stops working, if he fails, the bird will die every time. They're reliant on weather, they're reliant on food, they're reliant on wildlife for everything that they do. And every single day this bird wakes up, or these birds rather, wake up. And that's, I mean, that's assuming you believe birds are real. I know some of you don't. But if birds are real, and every day that they wake up, they're reliant on God. It says here in verse, yeah, in verse 26, it says, they don't sow or reap or gather into barns. What he means by that is they don't, they can't hold food for the next day. They can't gather enough food to last them the month or last in the year. Like we have refrigerators, we have grocery stores. The bird every single day is fully reliant on God. And yet our heavenly father provides for them. They don't add all that much value. He didn't pick the lion, right? The king of the food chain, he picked the bird, that we must consider the bird. So that was one of the things that I noticed that, okay, that's interesting. He tells me to observe these things. I observe these things. This is what I start to notice. Then we look in verse 28 and he says, and why do you worry about clothes? Observe how the wildflowers, this is the same word, Kadam and Thano, observe how the wildflowers of the field grow. They don't labor or spin thread. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all of his splendor was adorned like one of these. If that's how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won't he do much more for you, you of little faith? So I did some research on wildflowers. It's like, what are some things about wildflowers that I might not know? And so I started observing those. And I discovered that wildflowers, even more so than birds, are entirely reliant on God. They need birds and bees and wind to transfer pollen from flower to flower. That's how they survive. They're entirely reliant on nature and especially on weather. I mean, goodness graces, you have like a slightly rainy day, it's a little too rainy, that thing's gone. They're reliant on God for survival. They add very little value to their ecosystems and yet God doesn't just sustain them, he makes them beautiful. The Bible says that he makes them more beautiful than Solomon in all of his splendor. I did some research on Solomon and I found that Solomon was not just wealthy, he was like omega, like Elon Musk and above wealthy. Like it's estimated between hundreds of billions to potentially trillions of dollars worth of assets and gold and all of that kind of stuff. So Solomon's like the richest dude ever. Some of y'all have some money, I've been to your houses, not even close to Solomon. Like you don't even compete, man. And yet the wildflower, in Jesus's words, is more beautiful than even he. And as I observed these things, as I started to consider these things, I started to notice this pattern. That like a lot of nature, a lot of God's creation, almost all of it, is entirely reliant on God and the ecosystem that he created to function. If that ecosystem stops functioning, sometimes for even a moment, they die and it fails. And so every day, not just the birds, not just the wildflowers, but like trees and bugs and little squirrels and even bigger animals, are really, really reliant on God. And yet our heavenly Father feeds them. He takes care of them and he watches over them. And as I discovered these things over the years and as I observed this more and more and as I did research on these things more and more, I started to realize that I don't think the cure to anxiety is in verse 33. I think that comes later. I think, might sound a little hippy-dippy, I think the cure to anxiety is in verse 26. I think the cure to anxiety is to consider the birds and observe the flowers. The reason I say that is because when I look at the creation, when I observe God's creation, when I consider the birds, and I start to watch the day after day after day after day, God takes care of these things that are so much less valuable than I am, and I watch it happen. I don't just get told it, I watch it happen. I see it in real time. I see flowers that grow and bloom. I see birds that eat food off of my fence or whatever it is, and I watch them come every single day. My fiance's grandparents have this little bird feeder for these hummingbirds, and every day the same hummingbirds for like five years will come feed off of. That is God's provision for them, is that hummingbird feeder. And I watch these things, I consider these things, I observe these things, and it starts to shift something in my brain a little bit. It starts to change things for me, because now the things that I was so afraid of is God going to provide food, clothing, shelter, which is stuff I have actually worried about. Like, I've experienced that. I have felt those needs of God. Am I going to be able to eat? Am I going to be able to feed the people that I need to feed? I have felt that before. Not as long ago as you probably think it is. And I wonder these things, and I feel these things, and I'm afraid of these things. And then I look at the creation around me, and I say, well, all of this stuff is worth so much less than me. And God takes care of it every single day. The birds aren't even like believers, probably. Like, I don't think they've sat there and like said the prayer of salvation, but God takes care of these birds. I mean, animals are like, like you talk about sin, like the stuff we're not supposed to do, they do all the time. Like, animals are not like moral people or things at all. And yet God takes care of them. He takes care of his creation. Will he not also take care of me? Will he not also take care of me? Like I said, this anxiety has been a thing that I've battled on and off. When I was in high school, I used to think that everybody that said they had anxiety was lying and wanted attention. Honestly, I'm sure there's some of you that if you haven't experienced true crippling anxiety before, you probably think the same thing that when your friends say, oh, I struggle with anxiety, they just want attention. Some people do just want attention, and so they'll use that as a crutch. But that's what I thought anxiety was the longest time. I'm like, okay, I get nervous about a test too. Like, it's not that big a deal. And then as time went on, I experienced it more and more. Like I said, I've experienced, where am I going to live? What am I going to eat? I've experienced, does God even love me anymore? Is God going to take care of me? Does he care about the people around me? I've experienced those feelings of just existential dread and fear. And there was one point in my life, I was a, I guess, technically a senior in college. It was my last semester. I had just been at Bellevue for a summer, and I went back to college for one more semester to graduate. And man, when I tell you that was a dark time, I go back and look at my journal from that time, and it was dark. And like, I was in a bad place. I was really fearful all the time of what the future held, and whether or not God was going to take care of me, and whether or not he even had a plan for me anymore. And I read this passage, I don't know, a hundred times at least. And I would read it over and over and over. In fact, I actually, I preached it at small churches in Lynchburg every week, every Sunday. I preached the same passage because they're all different churches, so they didn't know. And every week I would preach on it, and yet I still didn't figure it out. I didn't know what that cure was. I was still battling with the thing that I was telling them not to battle with. And so one day, it kind of came to me that maybe my understanding that verse 33 is the cure might be wrong. And so I said, okay, well, if it's my other idea, and it's to consider the birds and observe the wildflowers, then let me try something. I'm going to pick a thing that I observe consistently and regularly in creation, and I'm just going to see what happens. And there's a picture that I've got up on the screen. This was my driveway into my house. I lived on this beautiful barn dominion. We got it for a great deal. I mean, we're on eight acres of land. It was gorgeous out there. And we would drive up this dirt road multiple times a day. And I thought, okay, God, there's trees on the right, and there's trees on the left. I'm going to observe and consider these trees. That's what I'm going to do. That's what I'm going to try. And so I did that every day. I looked at the trees for months and months and months, and I felt like a crazy person. I'm just watching these trees and nothing's happening. And then the fall hit. It was my second fall there, and I noticed something that I also happened to notice the first fall. The trees on the right would always lose their leaves before the trees on the left, which is very strange. And I knew you wouldn't believe me if I told you. And I didn't have a picture of it. And yesterday at 4 p.m., I texted my old roommates and said, does anybody have a picture of that road? And one guy had one picture, and it just so happened to be this exact picture where you can see that the leaves on the right fell before the leaves on the left. And in future weeks, it actually was even worse than that. Like, there was a period of time there's, like, no leaves on the trees on the right and, like, still full leaves on all the trees on the left. And this confused me a little bit, and I started to wonder a couple things. I started to wonder if the trees could think, would the trees on the right get jealous of the trees on the left? Would they ask God, why do the trees on the left have their leaves and I don't have mine? Where are my leaves? Why did my leaves have to fall before theirs? They're right in front of me. We're in the same dirt, for crying out loud. Where are my leaves? God, why have you forsaken me? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Did they wonder those things? I used to think, did the trees ever get scared that their leaves would never come back? I've buzzed my head, like, five times, and every time I get scared, my hair's not going to come back. My God, do they feel the same way when the leaves fall? And I wondered about this for a while, as I observed and as I considered, and I came to the conclusion that if the trees could think, they wouldn't think that at all. Because the trees on the right, their leaves have grown back every single spring since they have been there. There's never been a spring where their leaves haven't grown back. For the 20, 30, 40, 50, however many years that those trees have been planted there, their leaves have always fallen in the fall, and they have always grown back in the spring. There has never been a spring where their leaves haven't

grown back. And so these trees, they would have had, if they could think, an experiential faith in God, and an experiential trust that God will take care of me, that my leaves will return again, because they always have, they have never not. There has never been a spring where they didn't. I came to the conclusion that for you and for me, especially for me at the time, that the key to the cure for anxiety was an experiential faith and trust in God. That like the trees, I needed to experience that God actually loves his creation. See, I was told it all the time, for years. I mean, this is not that long ago, it's like three or four years ago. And I'm told it all the time. I'm told God loves you, God loves his creation, God takes care of things, God. But until I stopped, as Ferris Bueller would say, until I, what did he say, look around and smell the, or you gotta look around and smell the roses every once in a while, or else you might, or I don't remember what he said, I had it in my notes, and I don't have my notes anymore. He says something about stopping and slowing down because you might miss life. That's what he says. I'm not recommending that movie, it's not appropriate, don't watch Ferris Bueller. Anyway, if I would just slow down a little bit, and observe the creation around me, if I would just consider the birds for crying out loud, I might start to realize, oh, God actually does take care of things, like even here in Memphis. Like it's not just like, oh, God takes care of the world, God takes care of like, the squirrel in my backyard. And God takes care of the bird that feeds on Pop and Gigi's hummingbird feeder. Maybe, maybe, it's a crazy thought, maybe God will take care of me too. And maybe even though my leaves have just fallen, and they did at the time, I was leafless, and I know that the winter's coming, and it's gonna be cold, I can feel it. And it's gonna be tough, and it's gonna be scary. I know that it's coming. Maybe God will take care of me the same way that he takes care of his creation. Maybe God loves me more than the birds of the sky, and the wildflowers of the field. If we can go back to the passage on the screen, he says up there in verse 26 at the end of it, aren't you worth more than they? That is a rhetorical question, he's not asking you that because he doesn't know the answer. The answer is yes, you are worth more than they. You were made in the image of God. He sent his son on a cross to bleed out and die for you, because he loves you. He didn't do that for the birds, he didn't do that for the leaves, he didn't do that for the trees, he didn't do that for the wildflowers or the squirrels, he didn't do that for anybody else, he did that for you, man. He did that for you. You are way, way, way, way more valuable than the things that he takes care of every day, than the things that he feeds every single day. Aren't you worth more than they? Yes, yes you are. We don't believe that half the time. So often, man, it's like we feel like we base our understanding of God's character on the last worst thing that happened to us. Somebody breaks up with us, God doesn't care about whether or not I'm gonna have a family and whether or not I'm gonna be okay, and I'm gonna ever find love. Or we lose a family member and all of a sudden God doesn't care about life and he doesn't care about my family. Or dad loses his job and all of a sudden God doesn't care if we have enough money to eat or clothes on our back. Our understanding of God's character, it's like it shifts like the wind in the waves. And that's just not how that should be. If we would just become familiar with God's hand in creation, if we would just trust that God actually loves the things that he has made, like a father who has a gentle and nurturing hand. Many of you don't have good relationships with your fathers, I know that, I've heard that so many times, it breaks my heart. God is not like that. God is a good father, he's a good shepherd. He knows his sheep, he knows you. He knows the hairs on your head and he loves you so much more than he loves the birds and the flowers and the trees. Aren't you worth more than they? Absolutely you are worth more than they are. Therefore, verse 34, don't worry about tomorrow because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. When I stop worrying about tomorrow, when the anxiety has been cured, when I have an experiential faith that God actually loves me and actually wants to take care of me and wants to feed me, delights in feeding me, delights in taking care of me because he knows my hopes and dreams, he knows that we need these things. The passage says that too. He knows and he delights in it. When I stop being afraid of tomorrow, then I can do what verse 33 says. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be provided for you. Then I can do that well. I can seek first the kingdom of God wholeheartedly and fully because I'm not so terrified that if I give something to God, I'm never getting it back. That if I give him my time, my money, my energy, and my effort, that it's gone. I need to hold onto it. I need to reserve. I'm like a hoarder of all of my stuff and my resources because God won't give it back. The analogy I heard of this not that long ago, I was listening to a pastor. He preached a sermon. It was a great sermon. What he said, he was telling this story about his daughter and his daughter would give away her toys, her like Barbies or whatever. And she would give them away to kids at school or kids that she felt were less fortunate. And the Barbies that she was giving away are expensive. I haven't bought Barbies, so I don't know how expensive those are. Maybe you do. Apparently they're not cheap. And she's giving away these Barbies and her dad was like, hey, you gotta stop. Now you can give away some other stuff, but you gotta stop giving away Barbies. Like these are not cheap. Like we keep buying you like $50 Barbies. And she looks at him and she's like five. She looks at him, the pastor's name is Drew. She looks at Drew and she says, dad, it's fine, you're just gonna buy me more. And the way you could see that is, wow, what a spoiled brat that is. Or you could see the way Drew saw it and that his daughter had so much faith in him that he could provide for her that she wasn't worried to give away her Barbies because she knew that her dad would buy her another one. It's fine, I can give it away. And I think that you and I need to get to a place in our relationship with God that I'm so confident that my dad is gonna take care of me. I'm so confident that my heavenly father is gonna take care of me that I can give everything away. I don't have enough money to pay for food next month, I'm gonna tie the double because dad's gonna take care of me. Why not? I don't have enough money to pay for car insurance next month, but my neighbor over here is in a terrible financial situation and they're desperately in need of help, they can have a whole paycheck because my dad's gonna take care of me. It's a terrifying thought, it's a horrifying thought because in the back of our mind we think, what if he doesn't, what if he doesn't, what if he doesn't? But consider the birds and observe the wildflowers, does he not take care of them? Though they don't labor or sprint thread or gather food into barns, your heavenly father feeds them and he dresses them more so than he does Solomon.