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.
This is our fourth episode now on anxiety and just another disclaimer.
This is for the 95, 90, whatever percent of the time, you know, the anxiety that you get
from worrying about things that in the world that just come along.
And it's not for someone who is dealing with crippling anxiety.
If you are, please, we want you to go get help.
Talk to someone.
Go see a therapist.
Get medication.
And then come back to these words, because these words are life.
This is Jesus talking to us, and his words will help us to train our eyes on God, who
is our good master, who knows everything about us and loves us and will provide for us.
He is concerned about, we looked at the birds and the flowers of the field.
And if he's so concerned with the details of these small birds and adorning the flowers,
we know that he will take care of us.
And so we can trust him.
He is good.
Let's come back to the scripture and start from there, Tim.
Yep.
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 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 field grow.
They don't 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 closed the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is
thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, you little faith?
So don't 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.
But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you
as well.
Therefore, don't worry about tomorrow.
For tomorrow, worry about itself.
Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Thank you.
So the approach we've been taking here is to look at the different arguments that Jesus
is making, and to use our brains, and to think through the arguments to help us battle anxiety.
And so instead of running after the things that make us anxious, doing this thought exercise,
and now we're getting to, in verse 30, some of the heart of what we've been discussing
for a while now, what causes anxiety, little faith.
And Jesus is using, I think it's, he may have just, I don't see it in other areas outside
of the Bible.
We translate it, you of little faith, but it's really little and faith, a conjunction.
It's like he's calling them little faiths.
He says, will he not much more clothe you, little faiths?
Which there's something, I don't know, maybe not entirely endearing about it, but it does
feel compassionate.
He's addressing us as someone he wants to help.
So the argument Jesus makes in verse 30 points back to God's character again.
How does this statement about how God clothes grass and Jesus' comment about faith help
us not be anxious?
Yeah, this was interesting because when you brought up the fact that it's, you know, not,
it doesn't appear many times.
It looked like, oh, where else does it appear, right?
And one of the places is Jesus is like asleep in the boat and the disciples are terrified
because they think they're going to drown.
Other ones to Peter, when he's been walking on water and then he falls into the water,
he's scared and Jesus says, you have little faith like in that moment.
And I've always wondered about that because I'm like, Peter's doing a pretty good job.
To anxiety-ridden situations.
Yeah, yeah.
And you know, I think how is Peter's faith little there?
It's not that it's more little than the other people that are in the boat terrified, but
it's little in the sense that compared to, you know, where it could be based on the thing,
the person he has faith in, it's small.
You know, my faith in like this plastic table being able to hold a thousand pounds or whatever,
like it's not like maybe, you know, but probably not.
So like my faith in this table is not significant.
My faith in God can be significant because God is capable of like carrying that faith.
So that's that I have not thought about that connection until you brought this up, Matt,
but it seems like, you know, that just is saying you have a certain amount of faith,
but it can be so much more if you allow it to grow.
Wow, that's a really good point.
Your faith can.
So Tim, on that a little bit on that is that I think one of the what I wrote down for this
is that usually when I'm, this is Jim and this is not everybody.
So we have made the disclaimer that like if you're having crippling anxiety and you need
help, please go get help.
Most of the time I'm not just anxious about nothing personally.
Right.
Like it's there's usually a reason I'm anxious.
There is a cause of my anxiety.
It's not just I like when I was out of work, I was anxious and I was waking up at 3am every
day and I couldn't go back to sleep because I was anxious about like it was, there was
a reason behind my anxiety and it's usually because there's a bad situation and I don't
see a way out of it.
Like I just don't see how this gets better.
It just feels, I feel stuck.
I feel like I can't get dig myself out of whatever hole I happen to be in and I don't
see a ladder to get out of the hole.
And so I think when I combine this with the previous statements Jesus makes, it seems
like he's trying to reframe the situation as looking at it, that instead of looking
at circumstances and looking at how bad the situation is, he's trying to say, look, there's
this, there's this external thing that can feel overwhelming, but there's also a solution
to the feeling of the overwhelming, which is to have my faith grow and to grow in my
faith and that's not necessarily linear and that's not necessarily quick and it's not
necessarily easy, but there is a way out of this.
It may not be the way out I'm hoping.
I usually, if I'm in a hole, I would like a ladder because I want to get out of the
hole, throw me a rope so I can climb out.
But Jesus is also saying, I won't, that's not necessarily how it works, but there is
a way to get out of this situation and that's for your faith to grow.
And I think on top of what you said, yeah, your faith in Jesus can grow and you can have
more faith in him so that you can actually handle these stressful things and these anxiety-inducing
things because they are real and in these people's world, these anxiety-inducing things
for the people that we're struggling to eat, it's not like they're going to listen to the
sermon and then all of a sudden, oh, hey, a bunch of food just landed on my table.
I mean, they weren't going away and so Jesus gives them a path to improve.
To improve.
I love that.
That is a great point.
It reminds me of your faith which is more precious than gold, it being refined and this
is so great that we can grow in our faith and that it is God who, because it's God, is
the object of our devotion and this is a growth opportunity, our suffering.
We talked about it before.
The suffering, none of what Jesus is saying is suffering is going to avoid you now.
Like you're just going to walk through magically life and nothing bad will ever happen to you,
convert, quite the contrary actually.
I think in, what does it say?
In Acts 14 it says, through many hardships will enter the kingdom.
Yeah.
I think that, you know, this all reminds me of a couple of different passages that have
like a shocking start and then a comforting end.
One is John 1633.
I think it's 33 where Jesus says, in this world you will have trouble.
And I'm like, great.
I don't want to hear that.
I thought I was coming into the church to avoid trouble.
He says, in this world you will have trouble, but then he says, take heart.
I have overcome the world and that the trouble, alleviating the trouble comes from being with
Jesus and Paul goes a little bit further in Philippians chapter four.
In verse six he says, do not be anxious about anything.
And I'm like, okay, that means I am perpetually in disobedience of the scripture because
I'm almost always anxious about everything.
But he says, do not be anxious about anything.
But then he says, but in every situation by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, present
your request to God and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding.
He doesn't say, we'll solve your problem.
The peace of God, which transcends all understanding will give you exactly what it is you feel
like you lack.
He says, the peace of God, which transcends all understanding will guard your hearts and
your minds in Christ Jesus.
And that to me is the scriptural sort of prescription for the kind of anxiety that we're talking
about.
Because what I need is protection from, I love that it says protection for my heart and my
mind.
Something that transcends all understanding.
I don't have to try to rationalize my situation and try to think I am upset about this situation
and it's directly related to this thing that I did wrong in my past, or it's directly
related to this thing that is wrong with society, or it transcends understanding.
And he's going to guard my heart and my mind, my part of it is in those situations, prayer,
petition with thanksgiving.
And prayer in and of itself is an acknowledgement, I need God, I'm turning to God, I'm not turning
to myself.
And I think that's maybe a good transition into the next scripture, but I love what we've
been talking about here with this, that Jesus is really highlighting here in his appeal
to faith that for us to see God for who he is, God is all powerful, he's loving, he
delights in the details of our lives.
But so if we can just move on to the next verse then in verse 31, he begins with another
therefore or so.
It's a continuation of the argument begun in the previous verse, Jesus is tying together
his examples now in a statement about God's provision for us.
How does knowing God as our heavenly Father, which is a reiteration of the framing also
found in the Lord's Prayer, how does that help us not be anxious?
And then you were just talking about prayer, how do we use prayer to battle anxiety and
also keeping in mind that previous episode we had on the Lord's Prayer, how does considering
the pagans help us understand Jesus' argument here?
So one of the things I was thinking of when you said knowing our heavenly Father is knowing
the scriptures and knowing the text.
And I think whatever anxiety-inducing situation I happen to have, the better I know the story
of God's people, the more I can relate that situation to the story of God's people, whether
that's feeling like I'm constantly running around and I think about Jacob who he never
really settled, he was always through much of his own doing, having to relocate and kind
of pick up and start new and never really had a great opportunity to sit down and be
still and be, build roots.
So or just general dysfunction and every single anxiety-inducing situation, I can see it in
the scriptures and because I see it in the history of God's people, it makes me less
surprised by it and it makes me think that this is not, I can pray through and go, instead
of praying like, God, why is this happening?
I can reframe in my prayers using the text to go, God, this is normal, this is part of
living with you, I want to learn to handle this better.
And instead of it being a prayer about, God, why is this happening?
This shouldn't be happening.
My prayer is, God, how do I handle this with you in the right way?
Because I should expect this.
I love what you're saying there, Jim, because it just reminds me how grateful I am that
there are so many mess ups in the Bible, because I feel like I'm a mess up all the time.
And it's great to see how God deals with people.
And so to bring in the scripture into your prayer life, I think that's a really, really
great thing that we can do.
Yeah, I think it's important too that it's interesting that Jesus mentions the pagans
here.
And he talked about in the Lord's prayer, you shouldn't just babble on.
I don't think he uses the word pagans there, I think he says Gentiles there.
But the world in which they live, the Greco-Roman world, the gods were just like, you know,
really powerful dudes.
They were just people.
And they were capricious, and they were sometimes nasty and vengeful for no reason.
And so if you were praying to that type of God, then you do babble on.
You say as many words as possible.
Their concept of religion was to do as much as possible to appease as many of the gods
as possible so that they will throw you a bone every once in a while and not throw a
spear at you.
And so they had to be very frenetic in the way that they pursued their gods, because
there wasn't the assurance that God loves me.
There was only the assurance that God is bigger and stronger than me.
And for us, we have the assurance that God loves me, that God is a giver of good gifts
to those that he loves.
And so we can find solace and we can find peace, as it's said in Philippians.
Peace for our hearts and minds when we settle down enough to remember who our God is, to
remember that God is our Father, to remember that our Master is over us and has our best
interests and our best selves in his mind all the time.
And I think this is a great point you're making, Ben.
And I think for our hearers, you might be thinking, well, I don't believe in the pantheon
of gods.
I mean, our culture is pretty atheistic.
I think that I read a statistic.
In the U.S., there are now, it's crossed the threshold of over 50% of people don't believe
in any god.
And don't go to church and all that.
And the ones that do, we could, well, I'm not going to go there.
We could do a whole separate podcast just on that.
But the point is, what's the common denominator if you don't believe in God or any gods or
anything like that?
It's still all on you, just like the people back then, oh, I got to pray many words to
oh, did I pray to the right God for the certain thing about the harvest or about this thing?
And oh, I forgot.
And oh, it's my fault.
This is all messed up.
And so the pressure is still on you.
And instead of no, no, God is all powerful and isn't it wonderful?
He loves us.
Yeah.
I was thinking about the way you were describing a van.
I love the way you describe the gods of the Greco-Roman world because it's almost like
they're like a wild card, like that friend that some of you might have had and some of
you might not have.
It's like he could be either real, he or she could be either fantastic and great or they
could just completely flip out and you're like, OK, this isn't, I don't want to be around
you anymore.
That's sort of how those gods, when you read the story seem, that's why they're fun stories
to read.
But that's the thinking about it in the context of that's the gods of the Greco-Roman world.
And if this is mostly a Jewish audience, they didn't necessarily believe that, but I have
a hard time believing they weren't at least semi-aware of it.
And so Jesus reassuring them that I'm not like that, the God you're with and the God
you're choosing to serve in the first episode of this section we talked about, the God we're
choosing to serve is not that.
He loves you.
You can trust that he loves you.
He's not a wild card to use 21st century language.
He's consistent.
He will not just on a whim decide, I don't like you anymore and throw a lightning bolt
at you.
Yeah.
Well, in our world, it's maybe the equivalent to the pantheon of gods would be, OK, what
do I need to make my life right?
If I just get my health and nutrition right, so I'm going to focus on that.
Oh, but I also need to focus on my career.
And I need to make sure that my career is right in the right place and that I have, but
I also have to focus on my family and make sure that everything in my family is OK and
make sure that my marriage is good.
But I also need to make sure I get my need time and I have to make sure that.
And so those are those all become for us like a sort of pantheon of gods.
And we don't know which one to pay attention to at a time.
We don't we don't know which one to pander to it so that we can make sure.
And then we and then we leave that one alone and we say, OK, I'm going to focus on my career
now.
And then suddenly your children are going off on the deep end.
OK, I need to focus on my family now.
But if I focus on my family, I can't get that promotion.
And if I but if I don't get the promotion, if I don't take care of myself and get some
me time and escape and get away, then I'm frenzied in my mind and you just like you're
you're you're all out of chasing after these things.
That's what that's what Jesus said.
The the the the pagans chase after and it's always a chasing after.
And with God, it's not a chasing after with God.
It's a sitting and understanding that you don't have to chase it.
He's given it to you.
Wow.
You just hit on something pretty profound there with comparing this to idolatry because
I think you're right.
These are things that we pursue, we desire and you're right when we when we give our
attention to them.
We we get all out of whack because in our life goes out of control because it gets back
to one of the fundamental things.
We should not be sitting on that throne.
It should be God.
Yeah, right.
Wow.
I think I love what we've been covering here.
I'm going to maybe start another question.
We won't probably have time to get through all of it, but I'll just say one other thing
here, which I think we've been hitting on with this question that we just asked was
about how I think what he's drawing out here with the the little faith statement.
It's a continuation of that that really anxiety puts us on the same level as unbelievers because
we are running around chasing like you said, Van, these things that everyone in the world
everyone else in the world chases.
We're not acting any different.
And so our faith is not in God and the same things that make the the world worry or even
thrill that people in the world should not be the same things that we do.
And I love that we can have that piece that transcends understanding.
I love the the Philippian scripture you shared.
The other one I was thinking about was in 1 Peter 5 that we can cast all our anxieties
on him because he cares for us.
So let's just do another question another time.
So what we looked at here was how great God is, how we can have faith in him that it is
wonderful that we can because he is limitless and because he is the source of our faith,
we can have real security and our faith can grow because we are looking to a limitless
God.
And yeah, we might have trouble in this world, but we can overcome the world because Jesus
has, we can spend time with him, the overcomer.
And our troubles can be alleviated.
So I love what we've been talking about here, bringing in scripture, praying, really going
to God.
This has been a great discussion.
Thank you.