Hey, I'm Matt Brownell.
And I'm Van Owens.
And I'm Tim Adams.
Welcome to Climbing the Mountain, where we dive into the scriptures and discuss themes,
connections, and real life application.
We're kicking off a series here where we're going to examine the Sermon on the Mount and
discuss implications for this teaching for Christians today.
Welcome back.
Last time we had another great episode with Jim Garten, and he's back.
And we're closing out Matthew 6 now.
The previous passages thrust of treasuring heavenly treasure, as opposed to treasuring
earthly treasure, flows right into the subject matter we're going to discuss now, which is
anxiety.
Jesus tells us not to worry.
But there is a lot of fear and anxiety in the world today.
So I want to preface what we're going to examine with the disclaimer.
If you are struggling with crippling anxiety, we don't want you to hear this discussion
and feel worse.
We hope you get help.
Help might come in several ways, including therapy, even medication.
We don't want anyone to hear this discussion and think, oh, I'm just not spiritual enough,
I guess, or think you need to come off medication that you might really need.
We don't want you to get depressed or further anxious thinking God is judging you on top
of how you're already feeling.
We just want you to consider Jesus' words and know that they are said with incredible
love for you.
If taking medication is what you need to be able to hear these words in the first place,
that's great.
That's a miracle God has provided.
Take it.
Start developing strategies to address mental health.
We believe Jesus' words will help.
For all of us, I'm guessing anxiety is something we've tasted and probably on more than one
occasion.
I know I have.
Jesus' words may sound really odd to us because what he does is so opposite of our
culture.
Instead of dealing with a strong emotion like anxiety, emotionally, he uses logic.
He doesn't focus on the feeling itself directly.
He focuses on something else and expects a list of thoughts or arguments, really, to
help us feel differently.
Some of you who might be in cognitive therapy, behavioral therapy, probably already see the
value of what Jesus is doing here.
What I want to point out that we see especially strong in this passage is something true of
the Bible as a whole.
If you haven't noticed, the Bible isn't just a bunch of cool quotes.
It's not just the book of Proverbs.
It makes arguments and expects us to wrestle with what it's saying, to love God with our
mind and struggle to understand what he's teaching us.
What we're going to do here, and we hope this is helpful for you as you approach anxiety
specifically in the Bible in general, is we're going to look at these arguments.
Jesus gives us several reasons why we shouldn't worry.
Let's read.
Great.
So in Matthew 6, verse 25-34, Jesus says, Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your
life when you eat or drink or about your body, what you will wear.
Is not life more than food and the body more than clothes?
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?
Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
And why do you worry about clothes?
See how the flowers of the fields grow.
They do not labor or spin.
Yet I tell you that not even Solomon and all his splendor was dressed like one of these.
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 clothes you, you of little faith?
So 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 that you need
them.
But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you
as well.
Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.
Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Ask him.
All right, Jesus tells us not to be anxious several times, and he gives us nine reasons
not to worry.
We're going to start looking at each one, and we will get through as many as we can.
The first thing I want to draw our attention to is this word therefore.
So we're already in the middle of an argument at verse 25.
So I want to read the previous verse and then ask this question.
In verse 24, no one can serve two masters, either you will hate the one and love the
other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve both God and money.
Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink or about
your body, what you will wear.
Why does the premise that we cannot serve two masters form the basis of Jesus's therefore,
do not worry?
So I can start on this one.
As Matt has explained, my passion is ancient cultures and sort of trying to get into the
mind of the original hearers.
And the idea that you can't serve two masters, we went over this in one of the last pods.
There is at least a fair portion of Jesus's audience that is 100% behind that.
If you ask a Pharisee, can you serve two masters, they'll say, of course you cannot serve both
God and the accumulation of wealth.
Amen.
And then Jesus almost gives those a starting point to go, because that's true and because
you're with me here, don't worry.
Do not worry.
And then he goes into, and I'm not going to steal, I'm going to try to not steal as much
of Matt's thunder as I can to keep going.
But he gives them the arguments of why we cannot worry because if you've chosen to serve
God and if you're trying to serve God and if you're already doing that, you have made
the right choice.
And so that's sort of what I hear in this lead in, is that he's saying, you've chosen
to serve God, you've made the right choice.
Let me show you some of the reasons you've made the right choice and why that's such
a good choice and why God will provide the things you need even though it can be hard
to see exactly where that goes.
So it's pointing back to something about the nature of God and you've chosen to serve
Him and now here's how that looks.
Yes, exactly.
Cool.
Yeah, when you have a master that master one of the, I don't know, agreements the right
word, but one of the understandings is that there's a provision that's going to be made.
You serve them and then they take care of you and that can go really well or really
poorly depending on who your master is.
And I think the crux of this particular verse is Jesus saying, you don't need to worry because
God is your master.
He's going to explain the reasons why God's character shows.
That is great to point out.
It reminds me of the Covenantal Agreement.
That was baked into it.
I am now under your kingship and the king provides for those under his.
That is a wonderful point.
Yeah, I think it's also talking about what Jesus is talking about here is integrity,
that perhaps a source of anxiety is a lack of integrity.
And by that, I mean a lack of if you're trying to serve two masters, you're going to end
up, you're going to end up broken in two pieces in some way.
And that is for me, that is a source of anxiety when you're trying to, you're trying to fulfill
two different things that seem to take all of your time or all of your effort or all
of your emotional energy.
And that he's saying, you know, because you have to serve one master and you're serving
the correct one, as Tim was saying, and you're serving the one who's going to provide for
you.
It's a, it's a, and that's what I mean by integrity.
It's the, it's the one master who's the master over all things.
Wow.
That's, I love what you were just saying about integrity.
I think you're right when you're, when I'm, when I have a focus on more than one thing,
it's real hard to keep track of.
My wife is amazing.
She can, it seems like she can do a million things all at once.
And I'm like, I can do maybe one thing if I keep focused on that, or there was everything
falls apart.
Right.
I'll give, I'll give a, just a quick example of that.
I, I have every other Friday off because of my work schedule.
And so I get to play stay at home parent every other Friday.
And I actually get more stressed out on my off Fridays because I have to get the kids
around, get them ready, get them fed pretty much all by myself and complete tasks at home
that in a normal flow of life would be not a big deal, but because I have to do stay
at, play stay at home parent for one day, it just is, it can be overwhelming.
And I get, I find myself getting more stressed off when I'm off on a Friday than when I'm
working on a Friday.
Yeah.
No, it reminds me of COVID.
Remember when we were all home and our kids were too.
And we're, and that's when I realized, Oh my gosh, this is insane.
What's going on?
I can't do anything.
And I've got to get them, now they're doing PE in my, my living room.
And they've got their, with their computers and they're dancing around and playing music.
And I'm, there's no way I can, I can get my work done.
And, you know, I, I, I feel like I gave up on a lot of things parenting wise.
When it was the end of the school day, I was like, go ahead, watch your iPad.
Be on the computer.
I got to focus now.
Right.
Yeah.
So when I was thinking about this, I really appreciated the conversations we've been
having about God and money.
And I think one of the things that we pulled out of that is with respect to not being able
to serve two, two masters, if we pursue worldly things, I think it, we begin to love them more
than God.
And I think that's, so one of the things we talked about was what we fix our gaze upon,
our physical eyes in some way are training our hearts to desire what we behold.
And I think this is where we can form almost like an addiction to things in the world.
I go, I need that, I need that.
And, and, you know, anyone who's experienced or seen addiction knows that you, that high
that you get is not going to sustain you and you're always going to be chasing that wonderful
experience you had.
And, and it, and it doesn't even have to be like it could be anything you're addicted
to shopping, you know, whatever it is.
And this is, this is the dynamic that we see with the people in Romans one where they had
traded the glory of God for the glory of created things.
And so I think since it's impossible to serve both God and money, don't love money.
And I want to leave our audience with a test here.
And this is for all of us, but think about what you're worried about.
If we're worried about all the stuff we can buy with money.
And I, and Jesus mentions food and clothing with sure feel like essentials for living.
But I think in the U S we've got plenty of food and clothing.
And so what do we end up worried about?
Like a lot of, like, will I get that job?
Will I, you know, be able to take that vacation?
Will it be where I want?
You know, will I get the, go to that concert?
Will I get the good seats?
I don't know.
Whatever it is.
If we're more worried about something money can buy, it's probably an indication that
we're trusting in money or the world some way and not treasuring God.
I think one of the things that's very hard about that is that there is a reality that
money, and we talked about this in the last pod, but I do want to bring us back to that,
but money, a lack of money causes all sorts of problems in our world.
It makes it very hard to exist in our world.
I heard an explanation of poverty is if two people need work boots, one can only pay 10,
one can pay 100, but the guy who pays 10 has to buy a new pair every year.
Well, over the course of, and the guy who pays 100, they last 10 years.
Over the course of 10 years, the guy who paid $10 a year paid the same amount of money,
but he now he has wet feet for most of the year and how there is a very real need for
money and figuring out how to thread the needle of am I content with what I have versus am
I just constantly wanting more?
What's the right amount to improve?
I think I shared last time I'm getting an MBA in the fall in September.
Not sure when this is coming out, but in September of 2023, I'm mark time stamp it.
September of 2023, I'm starting my MBA partially so I can put my family in a better financial
situation.
And so I've had to work through is that wrong to put my family in a better financial situation?
Where does that fit in with this?
And I don't think there is necessarily a clear, concise answer for it all.
It's kind of a, it's a hard thing to, it's a hard needle to thread.
Yeah, I think that, you know, I just came back from a trip.
I went to Little Rock, Arkansas to visit my mother who lives there now.
We used to spend a lot of time there when we were children.
And we were talking about a house that my grandmother lived in on Second Street in North
Little Rock.
And my aunts and uncles were saying what a terrible, horrible, ramshackle kind of house
it was.
It was rat infested and it was falling apart and the plumbing didn't work.
And I was flabbergasted by it because to me in my memory, that house was a palace.
I loved it.
I loved every moment there.
I was devastated when we drove by there and it was gone.
And they were saying there's no way.
No one even tore it down.
It just kind of fell down.
And it made me think of how they are looking at it from a different lens.
They're looking at it from a lens of what it lacked.
And I was looking at it from a lens of what it had.
It had all the people I loved the most in the world, the people that I felt most secure
with, the people who gave me life, the people who were my first heroes in my life, all lived
in that house.
And I think one of the dangers of money is the way that money mimics God.
That God is the one who provides everything for us.
God is the one who's given us everything that we need.
God is the one who takes care of us.
And money is, when you know God, you realize how poor an imitation of God money is.
But money is more, what's the word?
Money is more imminent.
Money is right here.
It's right in front of you.
You're dealing with it all the time.
Society is in some ways driven by it.
And so money feels like the thing that can give me what I need right now.
God's going to give you what you need when you need it.
Money is the thing that can give me what I think I need today, this moment.
And everything in our society is structured around that, from fast food to fast coffee
to overnight delivery from Amazon to everything that I want I can get right now.
If I have money.
There is a great tension here that we're hitting on.
Between what you have and what you need to survive with and then the deceptive qualities
of money.
I think it's really hard.
And we talked a lot about this, like where do we train our heart?
What is our real focus?
And so money is a means to an end.
It's not the thing we should be trusting.
That's why I think there's the fun little in God we trust on the back of our money.
We should remember that.
I think that's good to remember, even though that seems like it's lost on a lot of people.
Pretty much.
Well, so Jesus continues and let's get through maybe one more question here.
Is not life more than food and the body more than clothes?
This is another argument that is sort of a sub-argument, I guess, to the previous assertion.
What does Jesus mean by this statement and how does it help us not be anxious to think
that life is not life more than food and the body more than clothes?
So I see the way I hear this is Jesus calling the people who are listening back to what
they learned in Torah.
One of the first stories a little Jewish kid would have learned is the story of the Exodus
and how God fed his people with the manna and the bread or the manna and the quail.
He would be calling them back to saying, God values you and will give you what you need.
I forget exactly where it is, but he says, when you were with me in the desert, you lacked
nothing.
Even though you didn't know where your food and water was coming from, you didn't have
a food source for hundreds of thousands of people, but I gave you food, I provided food.
I think he's trying to call the people back to this and to remind them that he values
people, that God values human beings far more than he values anything else.
He's trying to tell them, you know I will take care of you if you trust me and follow
me.
You read the stories, you understand that.
That's been a fundamental tendon of your faith for a long time.
Come back to that, come back to trusting that.
I love what you're saying there about calling back to their wilderness journey and how Moses
at the end is telling them, hey, your clothes didn't fall apart.
It's almost like, wow, what a miracle.
We've been wandering all that time and we had what we needed.
God took care of our clothing even.
Yep, for 40 years, most clothing doesn't last 40 years.
Really?
Yeah, there's a quote from Clemente Alexandria saying that some men live that they may eat,
but the instructor enjoys this to eat that we may live.
And I think when we are unnecessarily focused on the material things that are going to sustain
us or that we think will sustain us past even what we basically need, we forget the richness
of life in the kingdom and in God that He wants us to experience.
If I'm obsessed about, am I going to have enough?
It's really hard for me to be filled with a life that's bringing love, joy, peace, patience,
all the fruits of the spirit.
And so I think that's, it's helpful for me, okay, these material things I need to eat to
live.
I need to be sustained, but they are subservient to my actual life in God.
I can't order that.
You mentioned Clemente of Alexandria.
Is that from his one on the proper use of wealth?
I don't think so.
That's called how can the rich man be saved?
It's what it is called, the instructor.
Oh, okay.
He's got some good stuff in there.
This is great.
I love what you're saying about, if you're focused on my needs, then you're not focused
on how can I be giving, right?
Yeah.
And those connections with others of being able to offer yourself in love, to be able
to actually receive things with joy instead of like, you know, striving and grabbing.
And I think when I look at my life, like that's what makes life worth living.
I think it's a picture of what life will look like, you know, in the new creation that
we're trying to be a part of.
Yeah.
It's, you know, life is the gift.
Life is the, life is the big deal here.
And it reminds me so much of when Jesus was in, was led by the spirit into the desert.
And you know, all the things that Satan tempted him with are things that he, Jesus specifically
needed.
The first, very simply, he'd been fasting for 40 days and he was hungry.
And so, yes, he needed food.
Absolutely.
He needed the necessity.
And the devil tempted him with it.
And of course, Jesus says, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes
from the mouth of God.
And then he offers him sort of dominion over the whole world, which Jesus in some ways
already had, although in that present form when he was in the flesh, it was something
that he was going to need to get at some point.
And it would have been very easy for him to focus on what he needed to get.
And then he tells him, tells him, throw yourself off the temple.
God will protect you.
Yes, he needed God's protection.
But anxiety comes in when you forget about what God has already given you, life, your
soul, your salvation, just what God has given you within yourself.
Forget about all the blessings for a moment, all the other blessings that you have of your
relationships and your family, your marriage.
When you forget about those things and you start to think about what I need, then we
get confused about what we need versus what we just want.
And to me, that's the definition of me for my type of anxiety.
I don't know what I need because I have it all mixed up with what I want.
And so I'm always sort of chasing what I want, thinking it's what I need.
And I'm just running in circles.
I'm a rat on a wheel.
Wow.
Something you said in their van was how I was thinking about this too with respect to
what do I really know?
And when I'm focused on the things around me, I'm losing perspective of what's most
important.
And I think this is a little bit of what Jesus is getting at here too, is not your life,
your soul.
More important than even the stuff that would keep your body alive.
And so in a sense, that's your life, which can be eternal with God, the more parts are
so much more important.
And to wrap it up here, I think that the stuff that I've really appreciated about this conversation
has been how we've all seen that this is getting us to focus back on God and God's character
and that we can trust Him as our Master who will provide for us.
And so we shouldn't worry about the stuff around us because God is our Master, the Creator
who will provide for us.
And so we can have confidence and we don't have to be insecure like when we're grasping
for the things around us.
So this has been a wonderful discussion.
Thank you so much.
And we're going to pick this up next time too.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you.