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.
We are on the third episode now of Anxiety.
And I want to start off again by just reminding us where we've come from.
And we talked about how we can trust God.
He is a much better master than money or anything we could pursue in the world that
he provides for us, knows all of the details of our lives, and will take care of us.
We need to trust him.
What we're talking about here, when we're talking about anxiety, is the type of anxiety
that we most often experience in life when we are pursuing earthly treasure, pursuing
the things of the world that lead to anxiety.
We're not talking about the type of crippling anxiety that if you are experiencing, we urge
you to go get help.
And that could be talking to a therapist.
It could be getting medication.
There is nothing wrong with that.
We encourage you to pursue that.
If that is how you're feeling.
For all of us, Jesus' words are life, and we want to pay attention to what he's saying
here as we move through this.
So let's refresh by looking at the scripture vein.
You want to read it?
Yes.
Matthew 6, verses 25-34.
It says, 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 than food, and the body more than clothes?
Look at the birds of the air.
They do not 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 field 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 clothe 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.
Thank you.
So last time we talked about the birds, and what we can learn from them, now we're going
to look at the flowers of the field.
Jesus tells us to see how they grow, and the word he uses for see is closely related to
the word translated disciple.
He's telling us to learn from the lilies, a disciple is a learner.
What is the lesson we are to take from them?
So I think that you don't see when you are dealing with plants, you never see a plant
straining.
You never see a tree sort of, they're not straining.
What happens with a plant when it grows is a natural process that is, obviously it's
contingent on the soil, and the sun, and the rain, and all of these things, but it happens
naturally.
And I think that what Jesus is saying here is that if our devotion is in the right place,
if we are number one devoted to God, that he will see to it that all of the factors come
together so that we can flourish, so that we will have what we need, so that we can grow.
And that it happens in time, it happens slowly, you don't plant a seed, and the next day have
a rose bush, that it happens through the course of time.
It reminds me of what Jesus told his disciples in John where he was saying about the vine,
and remaining in him.
If you're in the ground of nutrients that God provides, you will grow.
Yeah, two scriptures that came up over and over again, and I was looking at what the
early Christians were saying about this, were Proverbs 10.3 and Psalm 37.25.
Psalm 37.3 says, the Lord will not let the righteous go hungry or let them die by famine.
And then Psalm 37 says, I have been young, and now I'm old, yet I have not seen the righteous
forsaken, nor his children begging for their bread.
And so these are promises and just truths that have been observed.
And here it's a promise.
Jesus is like, I'm going to take care of you, right?
Father's going to take care of you, and from an argument from the less to the greater,
right?
He's taking care of the things that are going to be gone by tomorrow.
So he'll take care of us too.
I love that you brought Psalm 37 into this.
Both of those scriptures are great.
37, though, talks about not fretting throughout.
It's a really good one.
I was just thinking about this, I mentioned in passing before about how sometimes I can
hear, we can be at church and well-meaning people can say, just don't worry.
It's all going to be fine.
Everything will be taken care of.
God's got you.
Everything's taken care of.
And how unhelpful that comment truly is, because it doesn't necessarily feel that way, and
I don't see that.
And I love what Jesus does here, because he's actually giving concrete examples about
how God cares for His creation, and how God meets His creations needs.
He gives birds everything they need to meet all their needs.
Then he talks about the lilies of the field.
They don't do anything, and God gives them everything they need.
He provides, using this in the context of clothing, and he's talking about how he provides
for everything they've ever needed.
In Deuteronomy 8, that was the scripture we were talking about, how God says, your clothes
did not wear out, you always had enough food.
I'm obviously paraphrasing, I don't have it open right this second.
In Jesus, I love that Jesus is giving concrete examples, not just sort of talking in religious
jargon.
He's giving concrete examples about how God has cared for His creation, and how He's currently
caring for His creation, and how obviously there's still a large element of faith we
need to actually engage this and to actually trust, but He's also showing us examples that
instead of just saying, we'll just trust.
He's saying, no, here's an example.
You know that, it feels to me like He's saying, you know this, you've seen this.
Come back and remember that.
I like what you're saying there.
It paints God in such an engaged sense that He's looking at the details of these birds'
lives.
And then, if you compare the lilies of the field, the flowers of the field to birds who
are always going around, we talked about how they're picking things out to make their
nests, and they're always, well, those flowers seem downright lazy in comparison.
They're not doing anything.
They're not even moving.
They just sit around all day, and God takes care of them.
And I think that's an amazing picture too, that God is so engaged that He cares about,
He takes the time to adorn the flowers of the field with such beauty.
They are beautiful.
And you're right, it's another lesser to a greater example.
Well, doesn't He care about us?
Won't He take care of us?
Yeah, I think, Jim, remembering what you said in a past podcast about the audience and how
famine and poverty was a reality for a lot of these people, and the way that Jesus is
communicating with them is so loving and so beautiful and so patient.
When Shemitra and I first got married, one of the things she said to me is, don't tell
me to calm down.
She would be upset about something, and I would say, calm down.
And her instant response is, I am calm, because the demanding that you calm down created more
anxiety for her, and that Jesus is helping the people with their anxiety, but not by
saying, look, stop worrying about it, I got it.
It's not that short, terse, kind of commanding type of master.
He's showing them things that are abundantly clear right in front of them.
Think about the flowers.
See how beautiful they are?
See how well dressed the flowers are?
They're not worried about what they look like.
They're not worried about how they're dressed, and it immediately gives you a sense of, yes,
the one who's taking care of me, the one who's seeing to the agriculture of my soul, is going
to handle it.
I don't have to worry about it.
Yeah.
At the same time, I kind of want to ask another question about this based on what you were
saying, Jim, because you also had in there a piece where maybe I can imagine someone
saying, well, I'm not clothed like Solomon, or maybe God hasn't even clothed me period.
How would we address someone who might be feeling that?
Well, I would want to know, first of all, what they're thinking, the thought behind the question
is.
Right?
And then there's another question where we're trying to ask, well, I'm not clothed in splendor,
because to Jesus' audience, the idea of being clothed in splendor to at least a fair portion
of them would have actually been abhorrent to them.
They didn't like that.
They didn't trust that.
The people who clothed them, words are hard, clothed themselves, and I've said that word
too much today.
People themselves in splendor, they didn't trust them.
They didn't like them.
They didn't think they were honoring God.
So that would be kind of my first pass answer at that, but also that he gave the lilies what
they needed, and then he made them greater than what he gave them.
Yeah.
And I think for us in addressing that, one thing that we don't have that Jesus had is
perfect vision into someone's soul.
So Jesus could give this sermon and know this is exactly what people needed.
We have to ask a few questions before we get there.
And I know when I'm helping my daughter calm down about some issue at school, she just
started school as a freshman in college.
And when I tell her, calm down, it's going to be fine.
That doesn't work.
She's just like her mother.
You haven't learned that lesson yet?
I've learned it the hard way because I'm not that bright.
I keep learning that lesson too.
But when I say to her, so remember when you had to do your capstone project when you were
a senior in high school, and she says yes.
And I say, remember what that was?
Tell me what that was like.
And she'll tell me about how hard she had to work.
And this part of it was hard, and I had to overcome this part of it.
And I'd say, and what was the grade that you got on that?
And she says, I got to be on that.
And then I say, that's just like this, is taking the time to help the person to realize.
Because for me, when my worry, the bottom of my worry is always I might die.
So any issue, my car needs to be repaired.
And I get very anxious about my car.
And why am I anxious about my car?
Well, because if I don't have my car, I won't be able to get to work.
If I can't get to work, I won't have money.
If I don't have money, I can't buy food and pay rent.
If I can't buy food and pay rent, then I'm going to be on the street.
If I'm on the street and I can't eat, I'm going to die.
That's how my anxiety and my worry works in my mind.
And so if I go back to things that I've overcome, and I just asked myself the question, it was
really hard.
What was the result?
I didn't die.
I survived.
I'm still here.
I survived.
And if I can then say, equate that with my faith and say, I survived because God is with
me.
God is looking out for me.
God is protecting me.
Then it helps me to overcome that cycle of worry.
I'm going to share something here, which I think I've shared with a few of you.
And I can relate to what you were just saying there with some of my fears because when I
was a kid, after my parents divorced, my brother and I and my sister all lived with my dad
in someone else's basement for a while.
And it was a pretty stressful time.
And then when we finally got a place of our own, I was still sharing a bedroom with my
dad and my brother.
And my sister always got her own room, which made sense, obviously.
But we didn't always have electricity, and we didn't always have garbage pickup.
And it was a very, and I didn't always have enough clothes or food.
And luckily I had the special card that I could get food at school.
It was a pretty stressful time.
And so it's in me somehow.
I take that with me, and sometimes I'll have this fear, oh no, and things are going to
go sideways and I got to protect from that.
Instead of thinking, oh, you know what?
God actually took me through that.
I'm still here.
That was stressful, but we didn't starve, and we are all okay.
We're okay.
God didn't let us go hungry in the end.
I really appreciate you sharing that story, because that's a hard thing to do.
That's a hard thing to man to go through, especially as a kid, where you're like, wait,
I'm hungry, and you hear those of us that are parents never want to give our kid, say,
nobody, you're not eating.
Now sometimes in the case of my son, he's saying I'm hungry, which actually means I'm
bored.
And he just wants to eat for the sake of eating, so I will say no, I'm not a monster, I promise.
But nobody wants to ever be in that situation with their kids, and that's a really hard
situation.
And I think what that reminds me of is he says, you know, he says, see is closely related
to the word disciple, which means to learn.
And the idea that like learning doesn't just happen by telling in these people's world,
that it happens by experience.
Like Jesus isn't telling them, hey, just don't worry and move on with your life.
There is an expectation that it happens from going through things that can be worrisome
and making hard choices to trust God and making hard choices to choose to do the right thing
and to believe the right thing, and then coming out on the other side.
And I think about what Matt just shared about, we might not have had electricity.
That's an extreme example, and we are not hoping anybody else is going through that.
But there is an element of this is a thing that we have to learn over time.
It's not just a thing we get one time, it's something we have to go through and live and
experience.
Yeah.
I think you're right.
I've come to this where, and I know most people won't like this, I don't like this.
I wish there was another way, but we are conformed to Christ often by suffering.
And that builds our faith in a way that Easy Street doesn't.
So yeah, it's tough.
But I think the other thing that I was thinking about as we were talking about, how would
we address this for someone who might be thinking, I'm not clothed.
Well if you're a disciple of Christ, you are clothed with Christ.
So that's a pretty awesome clothing right there.
I mean that doesn't help necessarily if you got a pit in your stomach and you're like,
I'm starving, but in some senses our life is more than our food and clothing.
I also would add to that that if somebody really is in a situation where they don't
have food to eat, I will give you my food.
You can have my lunch.
I'm not going to, I don't need it that bad.
I can miss a meal.
I'll give you my food.
And that's how God initially called his people to live.
And I think, I was hoping we could get there, but God called his people to actually make
provisions for the people who had no way to get food for themselves.
We see it in the book of Ruth, that he calls his people to not cut some of the corners
of their fields so that the alien, the orphan, the widow, the people who truly can't get
food in their world, who have no mechanism to get it, they have something.
And so I think that person who truly has no food, no food, no clothing, that's where
the God's people are called to start to help that person and take care of them and to give
them some food and clothing with no strings attached to it.
I think that's a huge point that we need to be mindful of when we're reading this.
I mean, we knew that we asked that question to Matt originally, like, what do you say
to someone who doesn't have anything?
And I was struggling with that coming into this, knowing that all of us are pretty affluent
by, like, we're all firmly in whatever you would call middle class America, which is
a fuzzy term.
But I know that there are, I have many brothers and sisters who are not in that situation,
which, oh, I wish we had actually had someone who's there.
So I appreciate you sharing from your experience, Matt, of when things were different in your
life.
But there's this, we'll get to it later, it talks about seeking first the kingdom, right,
and his righteousness, and it makes me think about the passage in, I think, Mark, where
Jesus says, anyone who gives up, you know, brothers, sisters, mothers, fields, for the
sake of the gospel, receive 100 times more.
And there's a, we're giving up our trust in the structures and possessions that we have
in hope that God will provide, in trust that God will provide for us.
And that's a beautiful part of what the church can be.
And so for those of us who's probably most of the people listening to this who are in
a position where I have more to give than I need to receive, you know, there's an opportunity
to be a part of an incredible blessing for others by grabbing hold of this promise of
not worrying and striving and grabbing.
Yeah, yes.
And the church should be a place where you should feel free to ask for help if you need
it and not feel shame or guilt.
And I know when I was going through that period of time, I didn't want to have anyone to come
over to the house.
I didn't want anyone to see what this thing was.
I wanted to just pretend everything was okay.
And that's not what the family of God is supposed to be like.
It's supposed to be okay to be real.
Wow.
This has been a good discussion.
And I really appreciate, there was a lot to learn there from just thinking about the
flowers of the field.
God loves us and he cares about every detail of our lives and knows every detail of our
lives.
And even if we are suffering through a tough period, I'm thinking now about the vines,
the analogy that I was thinking about from what you were saying, Van, earlier, that the
vines oftentimes when they have to struggle for that nutrients, when they have a hard
year, it produces even better wine.
So there could be a period of time where you are struggling right now, but if you continue
to hold on to God, he will sustain you and get help.
That's what the church is supposed to be there for too.
So I want to thank everyone for this discussion.
We'll come back to this.