Embracing Uncertainty

Please take your Bibles and turn
first and foremost to the book of Philippians, Philippians chapter
four. I was sharing with the kids today
that this is what I would call a gotcha passage. Whenever you
preach on either prayer, or evangelism or giving that’s what I call
a gotcha passage that no matter who you are or where you’re sitting
all you have to do is hear those verses begin to be read and you’re
already all of us are already under some degree of conviction
and I would put this kind of in the same realm Philippians
chapter 4 verses 6 and 7 and I use this just kind of as a a jumping off point today. I
want to take you to another passage, but I want to cement the idea
that is so common to all of us. I want to focus in on the particular
struggle and really a sinful struggle with worry. Paul’s admonition
to the Philippians in verse six is be anxious for nothing. But in everything by prayer and
supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known
to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses
all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and minds in Christ
Jesus. It’s been a number of years since
we preached this passage, but essentially what Paul is admonishing
the Philippian believers is an admonition to live in peace. to live in peace in their personal
lives, to live in peace with God. And it’s a really simple
process that he lays out here. Be anxious for nothing. And that’s
easy to say, isn’t it? And that’s why we all get so
convicted about it. We know what’s right. And we
know that when we worry, when we begin to fret, when we begin
to fall apart internally first and then outwardly to follow,
We know that when we live like that, we know that it’s sinful,
but it almost isn’t enough to say, don’t be anxious. Be anxious
for nothing. We almost consider Paul to be
cruel in uttering those words, be anxious for nothing, as if
we can just blink and our problems are gone. But he does give an
anecdote. He does give a remedy to that
worry. After we resolve to walk in faith,
after we purpose to be anxious for nothing, He says that there
is a remedy for it. Let your request be made known
to God. Instead of worrying about anything,
because we’re supposed to be anxious for nothing. Whatever
it is that possibly can breed and bring anxiety into our hearts
and minds, whatever brings us worry is to be essentially offered
before God in prayer. Those situations, those circumstances,
whether it’s relationship, whether it’s money, whether it’s sickness,
whatever the situation is, instead of internalizing it, and worrying
about it as if we can do anything about it. We are to bring it
to the Lord in prayer. Look at verse six, be anxious
for nothing but in everything. And there is a contrast there. We’re not supposed to worry about
any thing. But everything that we possibly
could worry about, we are to bring before the Lord in prayer. How? He says it by prayer and
supplication with thanksgiving. Essentially, he brings in that
famous acrostic, ACTS. We come before the Lord in adoration. We stand before him recognizing
him for who he is. And right there, you’ve already
begun to embrace the resolution to your problem. Once you begin
to recount the almighty nature of God, or the goodness of God,
or the sovereignty of God, or the kindness of God, or the benevolence
of God, you’ve already begun to meditate and provide yourself
a cure for the situation for which you pray. Adoration. Confession. We come before the Lord in confession.
We come before the Lord because a lot of times our anxiety is
bound up in our sin. We’re worried for good reason.
We’ve offended somebody. We’ve done something improper.
And coming to the Lord and clearing our hearts, confessing our sin,
does great, great help to our worrisome hearts, doesn’t it?
You know that. I think it’s a privilege to have the Lord’s table. It’s
such a privilege to have essentially that spiritual stop sign that
doesn’t allow us to just proceed on any longer. That we need to
take inventory, confess our sin, whatever we’ve kind of pushed
ahead and ignored in our life needs to be dealt with in the
here and now. And then he mentions two other things in the course
of this prayer. in everything by prayer and supplication
with thanksgiving we come before the Lord with requests now this
is according to the acrostic is a little bit out of sync adoration
confession thanksgiving there’s nothing that will calm your heart
quicker than coming before the Lord just in an a heart of gratitude,
thanking Him for what He’s already done, recognizing Him for the
blessings that He’s already poured out on your life. And then once
you’ve done that, once you’ve praised God for who He is and
confessed to God for who you are and you’ve thanked God for
all that He’s done, then you come to Him and you lay your
situation before Him. in a simple heartfelt prayer,
much like the psalmist. Lord, you know. I’m not informing
you of anything. You’ve seen. You’ve seen my going
out. You’ve seen my coming in. You
know who’s after me. You know who’s against me. You
know my circumstances. You know my health better than
I know it. You know my financial situation.
You know it. So we don’t go to the Lord to
inform him. But he’s shaping our prayer. And we go to him
and we lay before him our requests, and then watch what happens.
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication
with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God and the
peace of God. It’s God who will give the peace.
It’s God who will make your heart to calm. It’s God who will bring
it about, and the peace of God which surpasses all comprehension.
Sometimes you tell the world, they see your circumstances,
they know what the diagnosis is, they know what your financial
situation is, they know all the turmoil in your life, and yet
you’re at peace. They can’t figure it out. It
surpasses all comprehension. The peace of God which surpasses
all comprehension shall guard your hearts and your minds in
Christ Jesus. What a great comfort that is,
isn’t it? But just by virtue of reading a passage, I know, because I know the human heart,
I know that I gotcha. And so that we could spend a
little bit more time in that consideration, I’d like you to turn just briefly
to Matthew chapter six. Matthew chapter six. It’s interesting that that passage,
the word there in Philippians is a divided mind almost. It’s an anxious mind that’s divided.
It knows what’s right. It knows who God is. It knows
what God has done in the past. And still it hovers over here
and what it claims is reality. To be anxious for nothing is
almost, that statement is almost unkind, isn’t it? One pastor
said that it literally understood those words seem to enjoin, demand
what is impracticable. And even if it were practicable,
it would be a breach of Christian duty for the purpose of Christianity
is the very opposite of making men thoughtless or careless.
The old translation says, be careful for nothing. We want
to be careful what we even. How we even couch that and explain
that. Scripture tells us many times
to care for certain things in certain people. Certainly we
should care for our own and provide for our own. We should care for
each other. But it’s that distractedness. It’s that over carefulness. It’s
that over anxiousness. That is so troubling to the human
heart. What it points to is anxiety
that really takes the mind away from God himself. It kind of
parks God over there and says, let me deal with my own situation.
This one’s too big for God. And it takes our earthly troubles
or earthly fears or earthly circumstances. And and really takes them out
of God’s hands or attempts to. Jesus knew this. Be anxious for
nothing is really kind of a truncated. Summary of Jesus position on
this very sinful tendency. Paul just kind of alludes to
it when he says, be anxious for nothing, but he’s thinking of
what the Lord had preached on. The gospels were very well known,
even though they weren’t written, Paul knew the gospel accounts. They were communicated by word
of mouth and Jesus, rather Paul, very likely would have heard
this particular account of Jesus teaching. Paul knew the mind
of Christ, though, as well. And this brief illusion that
Paul makes to the anxious mind, he certainly calls to mind the
anxiousness and the section on faith that is here taught by
the Lord in Matthew’s gospel. Introducing these particular
verses, one pastor said, the Lord Jesus Christ knows that
we are always ready to turn off warnings against worldliness
by the argument that we cannot help being anxious about the
things of this life. Half of our miseries are caused
by worrying about things that we think are coming upon us.
Half of the things that we expect to come upon us never come at
all If you would Matthew chapter
6 and I want to pick up all the way back in verse 19 Do not lay up for yourselves
treasures upon earth where moth and rust destroy, where thieves
break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures
in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves
do not break in or steal. For where your treasure is, there
will your heart be also. The lamp is the body of the eye. If therefore your eye is clear,
your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is
bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore
the light that is in you is darkness, how great the darkness! No one
can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love
the other, or he will hold to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve God and Mammon.” And with that, Jesus essentially
lays out two reasons that we’re not supposed to be excessively
concerned about our day-to-day provisions. In the first point,
there are more important things to think about. We can’t go about
worrying about break-ins. They’re going to happen. Things
are going to get rusty. Things are going to get stolen.
The second thing that he says here is we’re not servants of
money. We’re servants of God. We’re
supposed to be. But then he gets into this second section, and
this is where I want to focus for the remainder of the morning.
This section on anxiousness. Same concern that Paul had already
expressed in Philippians 4. Verse 25. For this reason I say
to you, do not be anxious for your life. as to what you shall
eat or what you shall drink, nor for your body as to what
you shall put on? Is not life more than food and
the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air.
They do not sow, neither do they reap, nor do they gather into
barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not
worth much more than they? And which of you, by being anxious,
can add a single cubit to his lifespan? And why are you anxious
about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the
field grow. They do not toil, nor do they
spin. Yet I say to you that even Solomon,
in all his glory, did not clothe himself like one of these. But if God so arrays the grass
of the field, which is alive today, and tomorrow is thrown
into the furnace, will he not have much more to do so for you,
O men of little faith? Do not be anxious then, saying,
what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or with what shall
we clothe ourselves? For all these things the Gentiles
eagerly seek. For your heavenly Father knows
that you need all these things. but seek first His kingdom and
His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.
Therefore, do not be anxious for tomorrow, for tomorrow will
care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of
its own. Here in this passage, there are
basically two general categories about things about which we’re
not supposed to be anxious, things that we’re actually warned about
here. He says, don’t be anxious about your life in the here and
now, and don’t be anxious about the future. The here and now
might be more focused upon what are we gonna have for lunch?
How am I gonna make it through this next week? The future is
much further distant. We’re not supposed to be concerned
about food, sustenance, food and drink in the days ahead. We’re not supposed to be concerned,
overly concerned about clothing. But we’re also not supposed to
set our sights far down the future and to express concern and worry
about that. And Jesus provides several reasons
here for living an anxiety-free life. The first of which, he
says, don’t be anxious about your life in the here and now.
And this anxiousness that he talks about calls for a corrected
perspective regarding our needs. Physical things, food and clothing
are not the important elements of life. And I know that almost
sounds absurd to our ears, Some of us are already thinking about
lunch. Some of us are already mulling
over the week ahead, the responsibilities that we have. Look at verse 25. For this reason I say to you,
do not be anxious for your life as to what you shall eat or what
you shall drink, nor for your body as to what you shall put
on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?
The irony here in this whole section is that, now it’s a scientific
fact, we can literally worry ourself to death, right? But
the interesting thing is we can’t worry ourselves to life. We can’t
add a single day by worry or concern. As one pastor said,
all of us, brethren, know by experience the power of worldly
anxieties of one kind or another to weaken our religious energies,
diminish our spiritual joy. Tell me if this doesn’t describe
those moments. We go to pray, and when our thoughts
and desires should ascend to God, these anxieties call them
down and drag them another way. We go to hear the word of God,
and these anxieties, like the birds of the air in the parable,
pick the good seed almost before it reaches the ground. They haunt
us in the closet. They haunt us in the pew. They
haunt us at the communion table. They keep us from truly approaching
God at all. Or, if we enter His presence,
it is with the loins of our minds sadly ungirdled, with the garments
of our spirits dragging loosely behind us and sweeping after
us the dust of the earth. Does that describe that situation
for you sometimes? It does me. Sometimes we come with good intentions,
we just can’t turn it off. We can’t tune out those thoughts. Psalm 39 offers us some relief
from that mind that we just sometimes refuse to turn off. Lord, make
me know my end and what is the extent of my days. If we knew
our limitations and how foolish it is to worry and be over-concerned
about things, we’d spend a lot less time in
the prospect of worry. Make me to know my end. What
is the extent of my days? Let me know how transient I am. Behold, you have made my days
as hand breaths, and my lifetime is nothing in your sight. Surely
every man at his best is a mere breath. Surely every man walks
about as a phantom. Surely they make an uproar for
nothing. He amasses riches and does not
know who will gather them. That’s life. It’s fleeting. And all the worry in the world
doesn’t produce a single thing. It doesn’t help. Won’t add one
minute to our life. And he gives a series of illustrations.
He gives an illustration on food. He gives an illustration on life
itself. And he gives an illustration,
not just for the ladies. He gives an illustration on clothing.
Look at the first. An argument here or illustration
about sustenance. that just as God provides what
I would call the soulless creatures, God provides for them in their
most basic needs. And He will do likewise for His
children. Look at verse 26. Look at the birds of the air.
You know what was interesting this morning? I got up, it was
still dark when I got up, I could hear the birds singing before
I even had lights on, before I heard anything else. The birds
were out there already formulating a plan. That’s what I surmised. They were out there in the trees
formulating a plan for what they were going to do for the day
and how they were going to get their breakfast. Look at verse 26. Look at the birds of the air
that they do not sow. Kind of pointless, but I had
already planted some of my garden. Birds don’t do that. Birds don’t
go out early, till the soil, you know, stick their finger
up in the air and try to determine, you know, are we going to get
a late freeze this year that’s going to wipe out my crops? The
birds don’t calculate any of that. The birds don’t sow, nor
do they reap. You ever seen a barn for birds? They don’t have a barn. They
don’t store up food. They don’t put anything away
for the winter like squirrels do. They don’t sow, they don’t
reap, they don’t gather into barns, yet your Heavenly Father
feeds them. And it really is a beautiful
image, isn’t it, of our daily bread. He doesn’t give them a
whole big storehouse of food. He gives them just enough for
today. And here’s another meal for tomorrow. Here’s a worm,
here’s a crust of bread. Are you not worth much more than
they? It’s a rhetorical question. Obviously
you are. You know what’s an interesting
image from scripture? Ravens. We think, you know, we
call them crows or blackbirds and they’re just kind of, especially
for farmers, they’re the bane of their existence. They’re the
reason that scarecrows exist, right? Is to scare them off.
They just are kind of vagabonds and scavengers, stealing the
corn from the farmer’s fields. Ravens aren’t farmers. They didn’t
plant any of the seeds, but they’re harvesters. They’re out there
eating and eating their hearts full. And ravens, I want you
to understand were considered unclean birds by God. Leviticus 11, you shall detest
among the birds, they are abhorrent, not to be eaten, the eagle, the
vulture, the buzzard, the kite, the falcon, every raven in its
kind. Don’t eat it. You wouldn’t want
to eat it. They were scavenger birds. They
were the carp of the skies, okay? And yet, repeatedly throughout
Scripture, They’re mentioned as objects of God’s care. Psalm 147, 9. He gives to the
beast its food and to the young ravens which cry. When God hears
the cry of the baby raven birds, God responds out of his magnanimous
goodness. And we don’t know whether it’s
bird feeders or worms or crumbs, but by some means, God feeds
them. Job 38, 41, who prepares for
the raven its nourishment when it’s young, cry to God and wander
about without food. God provides. Psalm 145, the
eyes of all look to you and you give them their food in due time.
Every living creature is fed by God. And the interesting point
here is the birds do nothing for it. They don’t pay ahead
of time. They don’t pay back. They don’t
store up. They don’t harvest. They don’t plant, they don’t
harvest any for the future. And it’s an interesting thing
that if you look back to the Genesis account, for people,
God made food before he even made mankind. He already had
the earth prepared and ready for us to step in. God made food
for us before he even made mankind. How can we be worried about food? Then he goes to an illustration
about life and the nature of fretting that worry is a completely
worthless exercise. Look at verse 27. Which of you,
by being anxious, can add a single cubit to his lifespan? A cubit
was essentially the measurement from your elbow to the tip of
your fist. Which one of you can add 18 inches to his lifespan? He puts it in human terms. I’ve met people before that take
a real jaundiced view towards sports or movies. It’s a waste
of time watching football. Most men would argue that shopping
is a huge waste of time, but the point is, the biggest waste
of time of all is worry. Not only will it not add to our
lives, as I already pointed out, studies now show that it actually
shortens our lives, doesn’t it? One pastor here said, nothing
is more common than a careful and troubled spirit. I suppose
if I were to have polled you as you walked in this morning,
every single one of us has something that is burdening us this morning. Either something we’ve done,
or something we’ve said, or something we owe, or something that happened
to us, or some uncertainty of some kind, nothing is more common. And he goes on and says, and
nothing so mars a believer’s usefulness and diminishes us
his inward peace, nothing on the contrary glorifies God so
much as a cheerful spirit in the midst of temporal troubles.
It carries a reality with it which even the worldly can understand. It commends our Christianity
and makes it beautiful in the eyes of men. You see, so often
we get so captured and so caught up in the concerns and the worries
of life that we forget who we are And how can that be a testimony
to anyone? There’s a third illustration
that Jesus provides, not only a perspective about food and
perspective about life, but perspective, fasten your seat belts, ladies,
on clothing. If God provides essentially what
he says, If God provides raiment, I love that word. That’s just
beautiful clothing. If God provides for the raiment
of inanimate objects like flowers, won’t He provide for us, His
children? Look at verse 28. Why are you
anxious about clothing? And I think that what Jesus does
there He puts it on all of, why are you of all people my children? The very children of the King
of Kings. Why are you anxious about clothing? And then he says, look at the
lilies of the field. Observe how the lilies of the field grow.
They do not toil, nor do they spin. Now what he takes us to,
another agricultural metaphor, not only now is the planting
thing brushed aside. They don’t go out into the fields
and harvest cotton and spin the cotton into yarn and then weave
the cotton into garments. They do not toil nor do they
spin, yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory did
not clothe himself like one of these. Now it puts forth that
image and we don’t have a biblical account or a biblical testimony
that clarifies that for us of exactly what Solomon dressed
like, but if he was the richest man that ever lived, you can
bet the guy got around and when he did he looked sharp, right? Look at verse 30, but if God
so arrays the grass of the field with flowers, which is alive
today and tomorrow is thrown into the furnace. Will He not
do much more for you also? These flowers, they grow without
any toil whatsoever. There’s no human care being bestowed
on them. I remember years ago, I was up
at Rocky Mountain National Park and they had a packet, right? wild flowers. That’s what I’m
going to do. I’m going to go reproduce what
I see here in Rocky Mountain National Park down here in Fort
Collins. That’s what I’m going to do.
And I spread the packet out. And I think a couple of things
came up temporarily. They didn’t last long. It’s really
hard to produce what God does, isn’t it? God does a much better job. And he basically says that if
God provides for the grass to look as good as it does, you
walk out into a meadow that God has planted, it is one of the
most breathtaking sights you ever take in, isn’t it? In its
simplicity and its beauty. If God is gonna decorate his
lawn like that, what will he do for you? Is he gonna let you go without
clothing? Is he gonna let you go without
your basic needs? Jesus says, look, anxiousness
calls for a corrected perspective regarding our needs. That God
is there, God will take care of our needs. And if you need
it, God will provide it. And you can almost say axiomatically,
if God doesn’t provide it, you don’t really need it. Secondly, though, he says that
anxiousness calls for a corrected perspective regarding the godless.
Look at verse 31. A life of worry and anxiety is
really indicative of those who do not know or trust God. Do not be anxious then saying,
what should we eat or what should we drink or what should we clothe
ourselves for all these things that Gentiles eagerly seek. And that word there just talks
about a desperate grasping for things. So worried. These are the original hoarders,
right? Because God can’t provide tomorrow,
I better get mine today. I don’t even know that God exists,
so I’m going to get all that I can. I’m going to make it through.
These are the original preppers, right? Well, it’s only natural
that godless men would live that way. They don’t even acknowledge
God. They certainly don’t acknowledge
His goodness. They don’t acknowledge His magnanimous
care. They don’t acknowledge His benevolence. They don’t acknowledge His sovereignty
that He sees all and cares for all in His way and time. And so they’ve got to grab all
that they can. They’re ignorant of God. They
have no idea the caring nature of God. And material things are
all they see, and if that’s all they see, that’s where they put
their focus. Anxiousness calls for a corrected
perspective regarding our needs. It calls for a corrected perspective
regarding the godless. And it calls for a corrected
perspective regarding the loving God that we know. The bottom line is our loving
Heavenly Father already knows our needs. Every single one of
us. Look at verse 32. For all these things the Gentiles
eagerly seek. For your Heavenly Father knows
that you need all these things. What things? Food. Life. Clothing. God knows. And this argument is so basic,
it’s rooted in our basic understanding of God. Let me ask you one thing. For those of you who know Christ,
when you were finally brought to repentance, why was it? It was because you finally became
absolutely convinced that you were accountable. That your life
had played out like a long-running movie before Almighty God Himself,
and He had seen it all, every sordid scene. He saw it. He knew you. He knew you better
than you knew yourself. And we became absolutely and
terrifyingly convinced that we were sinners and God had seen
it all. God knew it. And because of that, we repented.
We turned from our sin. We turned from the idea of a
sudden awareness of a God who had seen it all. We placed our
faith in Jesus Christ. And then we pick up and we begin
to live our lives and we forget how easily we forget that God
didn’t stop seeing it all. God still sees it all. He still
sees our sin, but He also sees our needs. He sees our aspirations. He sees our struggles. God sees
it all. God didn’t go to sleep. The argument
is so simple. God knows. Because it’s rooted
in the nature of the God who sees and his inclination when
he sees is to move and to provide for our every need. I think in the 18 years that
we’ve been here we’ve had this beautiful proverb preached exactly
once by my brother. Proverbs 3, 5, and 6, right? Trust in the Lord with all your
heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your
ways acknowledge Him and He will make your paths straight. And no wonder Jesus concludes
here. Therefore do not be anxious for
tomorrow. For tomorrow will take care of
itself. God sees God sees your need, God sees your struggle,
God sees your sickness, God sees everything. And if you were a
child of God, it’s absolutely absurd to think that he would
turn a blind eye to you. Spurgeon laid it to us this way. Care, even when exercised upon
objects, if carried to an excess, is in essence sin. Did you hear
what he said? You think and you care too much
about things. It’s sin. Anything which is a
transgression of God’s command is sin. Beside the very essence
of anxious care is the imagining that we are wiser than God. And
the thrusting of ourselves into His place. To do for Him that
which we dream He either cannot or will not do for us. We fear that He may forget. We
struggle to take upon ourselves those burdens which He is either
not able or not willing to carry. Those anxious cares are very
frequently lead on to other sins like the businessman who is not
able to leave his business with God may be tempted to indulge
in the tricks of the trade. He may be prevailed upon to put
out an unholy hand with which to help himself. We all have
those tricks. We all have a tendency to take
it out of God’s hand and to put it into our own sinful hands. And it begins with worry. Worry
is just the starting point. Let’s examine our hearts. Our merciful God, what a great
passage that we had preached by our loving Lord Himself for
us to prepare our own hearts for the Lord’s table. Lord, having
heard it, can we even conceive of coming to the Lord’s table
with a heart of worry, with a heart of anxiousness, a heart that
is focused on problems and things and issues? Lord God, We thank you for who
you are and we thank you that you are a God who sees all and
a God in whom we have placed our faith and our life. We know
that you will provide for us. We know that because we know
who you are and we know your nature and your goodness. As
Paul said, how will he who did not withhold his only begotten
son, how will he not also freely give us all things? Lord, You’ll
give to us everything that we need. And we take comfort in
that. It’s in Jesus’ name that we pray.
Amen.