No Longer Slaves To Worry Series

No Longer Slaves to Worry

Series: No Longer Slaves

Chuck Sligh

February 3, 2019

PROPS: 2 small weights, 2 heavy weights and 2 strong laundry cloth bags, one inside the other to be strong enough to hold all four weights.

NOTE: A PowerPoint presentation is available for this sermon by request at chucksligh@hotmail.com.

TEXT: Please turn in your Bibles to Matthew 6:25

INTRODUCTION

Illus. – William Knibb sailed to Jamaica to be a missionary in 1824. He evangelized the slaves in Jamaica, educated slave children, taught their illiterate parents to read, and established churches throughout the island for slaves.

This did not go down well for the slave owners. In fact, the magistrates forbade slaves from attending services, prohibited the building of new chapels, flogged slave church leaders, and tore down their chapels.

Still, the slaves openly sang hymns and prayed for each other and the numbers of slave conversions merely skyrocketed the more the magistrates persecuted them. Imagine the effect on the soul of these now literate slaves as they read, Galatians 4:7, where Paul said, “Wherefore thou art no more a servant [literally a slave], but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.”

Eventually Knibb sailed back to England, and his testimony swept away any hesitation from England’s churches to support the abolition of slavery.

On August 1, 1834, slavery was finally abolished throughout the British Empire. The night before the edict was to take effect, a service with over 10,000 men and women sang praises to God until the stroke of midnight, when they were literally freed from the bonds of slavery.

From that point on, there was not a person in Jamaica who was truly a slave. Unfortunately, in remote areas, there were those who did not hear the news. They continued in slavery because they were not aware of freedom. Former slave masters kept these slaves in the dark, and free people continued to work as slaves for months after the Emancipation Proclamation.

Sometimes we believers are like those slaves in remote parts: We’re free from Satan’s chains, but we’ve listened to our former slave owner’s lies that we’re still enslaved.

Today I begin a series titled, “No Longer Slaves”. There are many ways Satan keeps us enslaved. But God wants His people to be FREE!!! Yes, we will face problems, but there’s no problem a Christian can’t overcome in Christ’s power and there’s nothing God cannot free us from by His power.

Today we want to look at worry, something that can enslave any of us if we’re not careful.

Follow along with me as I read Matthew 6:25-34 – “Therefore I say unto you, ‘Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? 26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? 27 Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? 28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: 29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? 31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? 32 (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. 33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. 34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

Jesus tells us how to be free from worry through two examples of creation—fowls and flowers.

Verse 26 tells us that the FOWLS OF THE AIR don’t worry about food or where it’s going to come from, because their Father feeds them.

Verses 28-30 say that the LILIES IN THE FIELD don’t worry how they look. They don’t think, Will I be able to clothe myself and family? Jesus said that these flowers would put Solomon’s temple and all His kingly splendor to shame in their beauty!

So, God uses these fowls and flowers to bring home a truth to us: Don’t worry about whether you’ll have the provision for your daily needs. Jesus sums it all up in verse 34 – “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”