‘Do not be anxious.’ That’s what Jesus told his disciples. If only! we might think. Can we banish anxiety from our hearts simply because Jesus tells us to?
We’re in a series in Luke, following Jesus and his disciples on their journey from Galilee down to Jerusalem. Their journey starts in Luke 9 when Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem. It continues all the way to Luke 19 when Jesus enters Jerusalem on a donkey.
As Jesus travels along he heals. He drives out demons. He has arguments with the Jewish leaders. And naturally, he draws crowds. At the beginning of chapter 12, Luke writes, ‘In the meantime, when so many thousands of the people had gathered together that they were trampling one another…’
We need to imagine Jesus in a great crowd of people. He’s teaching. Then a man in the crowd calls out ‘Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.’
Jesus has no intention of telling the man’s brother to do anything. He says, ‘Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?’ But what Jesus does do is give the man, and indeed the whole crowd, some very good advice. Luke continues: ‘And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of one’s possessions.”‘
You may be wondering what this has got to do with not being anxious. We’ll come to it!
Jesus wants to explain what he means and he tells a parable. The parable is about a rich man. Jesus said, ‘The land of a rich man produced plentifully.’ Production was ticking along very nicely. Now listen to the rich man’s thought process. This is from verse 17. [Emphasise ‘I’ and ‘my’ when you’re reading, also ‘relax, eat, drink, be merry.’]
…he thought to himself, ’What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry...’
Did anything strike you? This rich man said ‘I’ five times. He said ‘my’ five times. His goal is to ‘relax, eat, drink and be merry’. He’s very self-centred, isn’t he?
Jesus told the crowd, ‘Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of one’s possessions.’
This rich man illustrates Jesus’ warning. He coveted material wealth. As far as he was concerned, what the land produced was his and he was free to do with it as he wished. He didn’t sense any obligation towards people around him or towards God. He was rich towards himself and not rich towards anyone else as far as we can see.
But the rich man’s happy thoughts are interrupted. That night, as he is dreaming about his barn, God enters the situation. ‘Fool!’ God says. Do you imagine God like a kindly, sympathetic doctor who would never say ‘Fool!’ to one of his patients? Maybe you should revise your view! God then tells the rich man why he was a fool. Did he imagine that storing all his produce would give him security or status? It didn’t! That night his life would be demanded of him. He had been rich towards himself and had not been rich towards others.
Jesus concludes: ‘So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich towards God.’
You may be surprised that Jesus says, ‘is not rich towards God’ rather than ‘is not rich towards others.’ But it amounts to the same.
Do you remember Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 25? Jesus is talking about the final judgement. He tells a group of people on his right ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me,’ and so on. The group on Jesus’ right is surprised, but Jesus tells them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ Jesus then reverses it and tells the group on his left, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did NOT do it to one of the least of these, you did NOT do it to me’ [Matt 25:31-46].
In Jesus’ parable, Jesus said the rich man wasn’t rich towards God. I take it that he didn’t show any compassion to people around him, and God took that as not being rich towards him.
You’re probably still wondering what this has got to do with not being anxious! We can now move on to that.
It’s clear that there is a link between the parable of the rich man and being anxious. Can you look at verse 22? Jesus said to his disciples, ‘THEREFORE I tell you, do not be anxious…’ The first word in Jesus’ sentence is ‘THEREFORE.’ That means that what he’s about to say about not being anxious is a development of his teaching about being covetous and not rich towards God.
Jesus then continues, ‘Do not be anxious about YOUR life, what YOU will eat, nor about YOUR body, what YOU will put on.’ Jesus isn’t talking about anxiety on behalf of other people. He’s talking about anxiety about our own needs.
In some way, anxiety about our own needs results in us being covetous, accumulating assets, being like the rich man. It isn’t hard to imagine why. If we’re anxious about the future, we naturally try to build up reserves. If we’re anxious about our own situation, we tend not to think about other people’s situations.
We need to unlock the anxiety. How can we do that?
Jesus gave three arguments for why we should not be anxious. Maybe he had more arguments, but I spotted three!
1. Jesus’ first argument is that we shouldn’t be anxious because we’ve got better things to do! Look at verse 22. Jesus says: “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. FOR LIFE IS MORE THAN FOOD, AND THE BODY MORE THAN CLOTHING.” In other words, we’ve got better things to do than to worry about food and clothing! There are more important things in life! At the present time there are people in the UK who are worried about food. More and more people are using food banks. Marcus Rashford’s free school meal campaign obviously reflects a genuine need. But for most of us, food isn’t a problem. Most of us have no need to be anxious about food. But many of us still spend a lot of time thinking about food. We love ‘The Great British Bake Off’ and ‘MasterChef?.’ ‘Life is more than food,’ Jesus says.
2. Jesus’ second argument is that anxiety doesn’t help. Look at verse 25. Jesus says, ‘And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest?’ Why be anxious? What will it achieve?
3. Jesus’ third argument is that we don’t need to be anxious because God is looking out for us. Look at verse 24. Jesus says that we’re more valuable than the birds. God cares for them. On to verse 27. Lilies don’t toil or spin, and yet God clothes them. On to verse 29. Jesus tells us, ‘And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried.’ Why not? Verse 30, ‘Your Father knows that you need them.’ Little children are not usually too anxious if they’re in a strange place – provided they have their mum or dad with them. We have a heavenly father who cares for us!
So Jesus gives three solid reasons why we shouldn’t be anxious.
I’d like to add one more reason of my own. It isn’t from the passage. I’d simply like to say that throughout our lives Priscilla [my wife] and I have experienced God’s care. I’m not saying that to try to make out that Priscilla and I are shining examples of the life of faith. I want to say that to honour God who has always been faithful to us. We saw God’s faithfulness especially in a business we ran. Over and over again we found income mysteriously arriving just in time to cover our expenses. Often, we were very tight, but there was always enough. God is a much better financial planner than we are. He’s much better in every area of life planning, in fact!
Jesus is urging us not to be anxious. Once we’ve dealt with anxiety in connection with the requirements of day-to-day life – 'the bare necessities', as Baloo called them, in the Jungle Book – we can get on with the things that should really be commanding our attention.
Look at verse 31. Jesus says, ‘Instead, seek his kingdom.’ Jesus wants us to be the opposite of the rich man! Rather than being focused on accumulating possessions, he wants us to be focused on God’s kingdom.
In verse 32, Jesus tells us that God intends to give us his kingdom. What a gift! We, who choose to put our trust in God, will never lose out.
Now look at verse 33. Jesus says, ‘Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with money bags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys.’
Remarkably, selling our possessions doesn’t make us poorer. We gain treasure in heaven! The rich man in the parable lost his treasure by trying to holding on to what he had. We gain a treasure by giving away what we have. What a motivation to give!
Let me just sound one caution in relation to selling our possessions. I don’t believe Jesus was instructing ALL of us to sell ALL our possessions. As far as I know, Jesus told only ONE man, a ruler, to sell ALL he had [Luke 18:22]. There are examples we can think of which indicate that Jesus didn’t expect people to sell everything. For example, after Jesus had dinner with Zacchaeus, Zacchaeus told him, ‘Behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the poor. And if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold’ [Luke 19:8-9]. There’s no hint at all that Zacchaeus should have sold ALL his assets.
We’re in a coronavirus pandemic. Is Jesus’ teaching relevant to this? I imagine Jesus would say, ‘Don’t be anxious. What will anxiety achieve?’ Jesus would remind us that God cares for us, and our lives are in his hands.
Does that mean that Christians will never fall in or die from Covid? I listened to a talk on this passage by John Stott. He said, ‘Faith does not guarantee immunity.’ He quoted what Jesus said: ‘Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father’ (Matthew 10:29). Stott commented that Jesus isn’t saying that the law of gravity is suspended. Sparrows do fall to the ground. But the point is, not one falls to the ground apart from God the Father.’ God is in charge.
Maybe one more small point is in order. Jesus tells us not to be ANXIOUS. He doesn’t tell us not to be CAREFUL! We should certainly observe the Covid guidelines!
Let me conclude. Jesus told the parable of the rich fool. The rich fool covetously accumulated possessions and was not rich to God. The rich fool is very much like lots of people today, people the world sees as ‘successful’ people. For many people, success is measured in terms of how much you possess. The rich fool put his trust in his possessions. Was he motivated by anxiety or by pride? We don’t know. But many of us are like the rich man. We store things up. Maybe we feel secure when we have a healthy bank balance and we feel anxious when we don’t. But funds in the bank are a false source of security.
Jesus calls us to be very different. He wants us to put aside anxiety, confident that we are secure – in God. We have a heavenly father who cares for us and who has promised to provide all we need, if we put his kingdom first. When we are not worrying about daily necessities we can give our attention to the much more important things of life, and especially, to God’s kingdom. And we have in Jesus the perfect example of doing this.
Talk given at Rosebery Park Baptist Church, Bournemouth, UK, 31 January 2021
