If you want to follow along today, we are going to be looking at the gospel of Matthew, chapter 6 starting at verse 19 going down to verse 34. While we are looking up those passages, I have a question. Anybody heard of a guy named Bobby McFerrin? A few of you. Bobby McFerrin is a musician and songwriter and is famous for a song that was produced in 1988 called “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”. In case you don’t know the song, I thought I would put up some of the lyrics. I am not a very good singer, so I need somebody to lead me in this. (Sings song here.) Wouldn’t it be nice, if we were feeling down or worried, to just sing a song and be happy? Really that doesn’t work. As we find out in today’s passage, the long-term happiness does not come from singing a song. It really comes from seeking God out. Specifically from seeking God’s kingdom and his righteousness. We are going to see that in today’s passage, Matthew 6:19-34. (Scripture read here.) There is a lot of passage here. I actually was just going to focus on the part about do not worry, but I realized you have to start with the whole idea of treasures. It all ties together. This particular passage is contained in what is called the Sermon on the Mount. We have been looking at the Sermon on the Mount for the last few weeks and the idea that in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus was teaching his disciples about what it is like to live in the kingdom of God. When you live in the kingdom of God, although in the long term it is probably better, for the short term it is kind of a more difficult life because it goes against the grain of popular thinking. We see that going against the grain in the very first opening line. It says “Do not store for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.” As ancient as this passage is, obviously it is over 2,000 years old, it seems very applicable today. We, especially as Americans, get caught up in purchasing, accumulating, and storing up things. In fact, I just read that we spent last year $99.5 billion dollars just on technology and electronics. That is a lot of stuff. Even though we still have to worry about thieves taking about our stuff, we really don’t have to worry so much about moths and rust. A little bit there. But really if Jesus was giving these words today, I suspect he would say do not store up these things because ultimately they are going to become obsolete or they just become broken. They become things you find in a garage sale, a thrift store, or possibly even an estate sale.
As a side note, last Saturday, I was sitting on my porch and I noticed a lot of cars going by. Finally I realized there was an estate sale down the street. Back in the day, I used to enjoy going to estate sales and garage sales but not so much lately because I really don’t need more junk in my house, but I couldn’t resist going down there just to see what they had. I went down there and of course I couldn’t get away without buying something. I ended up buying a 1954 Roy Rogers metal lunchbox with the thermos intact. I couldn’t resist it. I did breakdown and buy that. But I began to think about estate sales. Really estate sales are sad things to think about. Estate sale basically means that you are going through somebodies estate. All their treasures and the things they had valued their entire life, one day somebody is going to be picking through all those treasures and buying them for pennies on the dollar. Really it is kind of a sad thing. So today’s passage by Jesus is really a fresh reminder that we shouldn’t store up things on earth because they are ultimately going to go away. They are going to be broken, sold in an estate sale, or whatever. But Jesus, again, never leaves us without a solution. Jesus goes on to say “But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.”
About this time, I would suspect that the people in the crowd are thinking Jesus is getting a little weird on us again. I don’t get what he is saying. What does he mean by storing up for yourselves treasures in heaven? We don’t have alto of information here, but at a minimum, it is putting things in a place where thieves can’t get their hands on them. The estate sale managers cannot get their hands on them and where rust and moths cannot go after it. What he is talking about is spiritual things. Spiritual things that are a result of living a life that is geared towards God and geared towards others. The fruit of such life; love, joy, peace, patience, and all that kind of stuff. That is the fruit of a life well lived. Those are the types of treasures that we are storing up in heaven. Even more than that, I think he is alluding to the fact that in the kingdom of God, in God’s heaven, there is this abundant storage locker of resources that is available to us right now every single day. We just need to learn how to tap into it. So Jesus opens up talking about don’t store your stuff in a location on earth. Store it up in heaven. But I really don’t think he is ultimately concerned about really the location of the treasure but rather that the location of your treasure has to do with the location of your heart. He goes on to say “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Jesus uses the word heart a lot of different ways and times. We see it throughout the New Testament. You can think of heart as the will. You can think of it as the control center of the human body. We are not talking about the physical heart. We are talking about the spiritual heart, the inner person that pretty much controls our desire. If our heart is bent towards God and his kingdom, Jesus seems to imply that you will live a well-ordered life. On the other hand, if you have a heart that is geared towards earth and earthly possessions, basically you are going to have a life that is disordered and really a life that is going to be full of anxiety and worry and all sorts of things because you are going to be living in what I call the kingdom of self rather than the kingdom of God. I have said before that we all have a kingdom. There is a kingdom of God, but there is a kingdom of self. Even if you are a single person with pets, you have a kingdom. That is your realm of influence. Some people have kingdoms at work where they oversee several different employees. Some people have kingdoms that include entire nations like we see with Putin and the guy in North Korea. We have people that have kingdoms over there. I think what Jesus is saying is be careful where you build your kingdom. The kingdoms of self will not last. Ultimately, the kingdoms of self will crumble and somebody will end up picking over the stuff in your kingdom. On the other hand, we have this phenomenal kingdom that is available to us; the kingdom of God with all these rich possessions we can begin to tap into.
That is why he goes on to say “Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food and the body more important than clothes?” That is why I included the earlier passage on treasure because this is where Jesus says “Therefore”. In other words, what I just told you about not storing up treasures on earth but rather treasures in heaven, in light of all that you don’t need to worry. In light of all that, you really don’t need to think about what is going to be on your dinner table or where you are going to get food for the day. You don’t have to worry about are you going to have clothes in your closet. He is saying the kind of life that I offer really is so much more valuable than that. Don’t worry about that stuff.
I know that probably about now, people are beginning to think well that was easy probably for Jesus and maybe even the first century people because really, when it all boiled down to it, they had to worry about the basic necessities. They had to worry about food, clothing, and shelter, but today, we are bombarded with things to worry about. We have to worry about our kids. What are they watching on the internet? What are they texting to each other? We have to worry about our health. We have to worry about all these different diseases out there now. We have to worry about our job situation. We have to worry about the stock market economy. If we don’t have enough to worry about in our own lives, the evening news will give us plenty of things to worry about from the war overseas to this new Ebola disease to the tornados or whether or not we are going to be struck by a meteor all of a sudden. We have plenty of things to worry about. But I would suspect, if Jesus was here today in this room, he would voice the same words. He would say don’t worry. Worry is really a symptom that you are living in the wrong kingdom. You are living in the kingdom of self or the kingdom of me rather than the kingdom of God. Although the kingdom of self may have worry, the kingdom of God is pretty much a safe place to be. It is a safe place where you are covered. You have sufficient provision.
In order to emphasize that, Jesus begins to use examples from creation. He says “Look at the birds of the air; they don’t sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” I get this picture when I read this of Jesus walking along and teaching. He is walking along with the disciples and the followers and he just gets down talking about this whole treasure thing, and just like you guys might have, they probably had a lot of questions. What about this? What about that? Jesus is just walking along and sees a little bird and says look at the birds. Look at the little birdies. They are now out there sweating things. They aren’t like the farmers that have to sow and reap and plant and harvest. They just go out basically every day and they pick the provision of God up. I am one who really doesn’t know a whole lot about birds. The extent of my bird knowledge is as a kid watching “The Birdman of Alcatraz” with Burt Lancaster or the Alfred Hitchcock movie “The Birds”. That movie made me more fearful of birds than fond of birds. I really don’t have a big extensive knowledge of birds, but I enjoy sitting on my back porch because in the morning I can see all the birds flying around. All of a sudden they start landing on the ground and jumping all around picking up all this stuff. I know just by observing birds that they are not lazy. They have to get up. They don’t just wait in their nest for somebody to deliver it to them. They get out and begin to pick up the provisions there. They do it in a complete feeling of trust. They know that God is going to take care of them. Day to day they go. They don’t store up for months. Day to day they go out and stuff is there. It is like Jesus is looking at the people saying if I care for these little birds, how much more am I going to care for you, a human being, the very crown of my creation? The person who is made in the very image of God. Of course the Father is going to care for that person. So the implication is if the Father cares for these little birdies, he is going to care for you. He has this abundant provision for you to tap in to. So much so that when we pray the Lord’s Prayer that we talked about a few weeks ago and we say “Give us this day our daily bread” we don’t just pray it in rote. We pray it in confidence knowing that every day we get up there is going to be provision for us. Jesus uses this metaphor of little birds to explain God’s provision.
Then he goes on and gives another metaphor right out of creation. He begins to talk about the lilies of the field. He says “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.” I know less about flowers than I know about birds. I am pretty good at growing weeds but not too good at growing flowers. I have learned just by being around some of you folks who are really into gardening really how beautiful flowers are and how wonderful it is to see the flowers grow in all the different shades and colors. I have just learned to come to appreciate the beauty of flowers. As a side note, Debbie and I were in Hawaii a couple years ago. We were blessed to be there. I remember going through a tourist garden area and I took a bunch of pictures. The one tree that really stuck out was the tree called the Rainbow Eucalyptus. Isn’t that a beautiful tree? This is just amazing in its beauty. God just created that, stuck it over here, and didn’t even know that many people would even see it but still created this tree out in the middle of nowhere that few people would see but created in such a beautiful way that it outshined the very robes and majesty of King Solomon that we read about several months ago. If Jesus was here today, he would say all those designers that create dresses and clothes don’t hold a candle to this kind of stuff. They can’t. This is created by the very finger of God. This is awesome stuff. He goes on to say “If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you – oh you of little faith?” There is a word Jesus even made up and it could be condensed to little faith. Jesus is the only one that uses this Greek word. He uses it several times in the gospel. He says where is your faith? How are you missing this stuff?
He goes on to sum it all up and says “Do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows you need them.” You may recall last week when we talked about the discipline of secrecy. Jesus also referred to the pagans back then. He referred to the pagans as the ones that kept babbling on and on and on, and he says don’t be like them because the Father knows what you need before you ask it. Now he is basically saying the same thing. Don’t be like the pagans again. Don’t pursue these things, chasing after these things because the Father knows already that you need these things. You don’t have to be like them. Instead, what you need to do is you need to “Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” This is the capstone verse. He is saying put God first. Have a right vision for the God of the universe that created you. Begin to have a real vision for his kingdom reality that surrounds all of us in so many different ways and then begin to figure out a right way of living in that kingdom. A righteousness that comes by faith. A righteousness that comes by sitting at the feet of the master, Jesus Christ, and learning what it is to live rightly in that kingdom. When you begin to do all those things, what will happen is you will find that you have ample supply of all sorts of provisions that enable you to get through the hardest time in this particular life. You will get food and clothes but those just become add-ons. You will be able to tap into this phenomenal resource called the kingdom of God in a way that you never knew you could before.
Then he summarizes it all. He throws in a little bit of humor I would say. He says “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.” In other words, don’t borrow trouble. Anybody out there like to borrow trouble? Who are the worrywarts out there? My hand is up too because I tend to be a person that is very good about borrowing trouble. Because I have a very vivid imagination, I can take a negative situation and really quickly go down these black holes of destruction and despair very quickly. In fact, I remember before I went into seminary, I thought about a thousand different reasons why I could not go into ministry or why I should not go into ministry. You know what? None of them came true. Not one. But I was borrowing trouble. I was looking down the road. I was taking things in the future and bringing it into the present. Jesus says don’t do that. Don’t worry about tomorrow. You have enough to worry about today. The kingdom is about today. It is right now. It is living in the present moment. If you are someone like me who tends to borrow trouble, you need to learn to practice the discipline of not worrying. Last week we talked about the discipline of secrecy of trying to keep your religious acts low-profile. Don’t go out there and let everybody know that you are praying, fasting, or serving. As I thought about it, not worrying is a discipline. It is a discipline especially for Christians that tend to go into that mode of worry. You have to train yourself to break free from that. The first thing you have to do is just simply be aware of it. I think most of us just don’t have enough self-awareness. When you get into this worry-worry frenzy, the first thing you have to realize is that when you are in the worry you are living in the kingdom of self. You are not living in the kingdom of God. Worry as a word does not fit into the kingdom of God. It is not even in its vocabulary. If you are living in worry and anxiety, it is the first clue that you are mentally and possibly even spiritually living in the wrong kingdom. You have to find out what you can do to get out of that kingdom of self. I have my own ways of doing it. It is a combination of prayer. It is a combination of meditating on some scriptures. It is a combination of maybe before I go to bed I memorize Psalm 23 and just have it go over and over in my head. I have to find what works for me. I am getting better at it. A few weeks ago, I took a class and one phrase that I left with is the idea that you are safe in the kingdom of God. What I constantly repeat to myself over again when I hear of some new news that I don’t like or I begin to worry, the phrase that comes to life is ‘Chuck, you are safe in the kingdom of God’. Again, if you are worrying, you are operating in the kingdom of self and you have to train yourself to find ways to get your mind into the kingdom of God where there is ample provision and supply for every single need.
In closing, I know that there are people out here that worry. I think if you are honest, every person in this room probably worries at some point about something. Some of the worry has to do with the fact that you are running around your whole life with no margins. You are running around like a chicken with its head cut off just going crazy. Running and running and running. What you have to do is stop and slow down and begin to recognize that your worry is due to the fact that your treasures are in the wrong place. Maybe your treasures are found in earthly things. It is awareness that you have that going on. The worry is an indication that you are living in the wrong kingdom. If you are living in the wrong kingdom, you have to learn how to move into the right kingdom, the kingdom of God. You have to train yourself to be able to do that. As you begin to move out of your kingdom and into the kingdom of God, you begin to see that God does care for you. You begin to open your eyes and you begin to look around creation and you notice things. You will be like Jesus and you’ll notice the birds and you’ll notice the flowers and you’ll notice the eucalyptus trees or whatever and you begin to realize God does provide. God does care for me. You become less and less like the pagans who are running around. Like the people that are outside in the world that are running around like crazy and that have no hope. They are just always in a constant state of worry. Again, to do that, it takes practice. I don’t know how else to tell you that. It takes practice. It takes the spiritual practices that I have already mentioned. Things like prayer, silence, meditation, fasting. All these things are nothing magical in themselves. All they do is put you in a posture to be able to hear from God and to be able to have a fresh vision for his kingdom and really what life is like in that kingdom. You practice that over and over again and pretty soon what you find as you go through life and you are hit with all these different situations and worries is that over time your response becomes different. Your response is not to panic, not to freak out, not to go crazy, but to realize that in the kingdom of God, you are safe. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added to you.” Let us pray.
