Living In The Kingdom 17 Series

Living In the Kingdom Part 17

Scripture: Matthew 6:25-34; Psalm 90:12; Psalm 139:23-24

This is a continuation of my series, “Living in the Kingdom.” This morning I want to share what Jesus said about worrying. We will be looking at verses twenty-five through thirty-four of Matthew chapter six which says, “Therefore I say unto you, take no thought for your life, what you shall eat, or what you shall drink; nor yet for your body, what you shall put on. Is not the life more than food, and the body than clothing? 26Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much better than they? 27Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? 28And why take you thought for clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. 29And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30Therefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31Therefore take no thought, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or, ‘What shall we drink?’ or, ‘How shall we be clothed?’ 32(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things. 33But seek you first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. 34Take therefore no thought for tomorrow: for tomorrow shall take thought of the things for itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” (Matthew 6:25-34)

Before I get into the message this morning I want you to think about how much time you spend worrying about something that has not taken place yet. Do you know that 100% of the things we worry about are things that have not happened yet? For example, you get a doctor’s report that says you have a serious illness. Well we know we have the illness but we begin to worry about the outcome. Then we find out that the illness is treatable but the treatment is costly and the side-effects could be bad. So what do we do? Do we stop and thank God that there is a treatment that will cure us or do we go into the worrying of how we are going to pay for the treatment and how bad the side-effects are going to be? We spend a lot of time worrying about something. If you lived to be 80 years old, you would have walked this earth for 29,200 days. Think about it? If you were to find yourself worrying only a total of 48 hours in one week (equivalent of 2 days a week), if you lived to be 80 years old you would have spent 8,320 days worrying. That’s the equivalent of worrying every day for almost 23 years and we know some people worry more than this. That’s 23 years out of 80 that is possibly spent doing an activity that one, is not healthy for us, and two, is an activity taking us away from simply believing in God and what His word says. I used the term “possibly” because not all acts of concerns is because we do not believe that God has us, but in this message I am focusing on those activities that do demonstrate that we are struggling having faith in God in our situation.

Moses prayed the following as recorded in Psalm 90:12, “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.” What Moses was asking for was for God to help us understand that our days are few on this earth so we need to use our time here wisely – choosing to serve Him faithfully. Think of the average child today. The first ten years of their lives are spent playing and having fun (even though they have to go to school.) The next ten years of their lives are spent playing, having fun and managing their hormonal changes and impulses. If this is accurate, the first twenty years of their life is spent doing what they want to do and enjoying themselves. For some people this continues into their thirties, forties and fifties. If the average child lived to be eighty years old, then twenty-five percent of their life was spent having fun and doing what they wanted. This time is not necessarily spent with a focus on God and the fact that Jesus died for them. Moses’ request of God was to help the people understand that they have a limited amount of time here on this earth and hopefully by understanding this they would make wise decisions as it related to their walk with God.