Economy and Anxiety // Sermon on the Mount

Discover the essence of Jesus' teachings on wealth and anxiety with our latest exploration of the Sermon on the Mount. This insightful discussion delves into the contrast between earthly and heavenly treasures, the significance of our perspective on life, and the choice between serving God or wealth. Understand how Jesus' words guide us to trust in God's provision, live in the present, and evaluate our life's priorities. If you're seeking spiritual growth, peace of mind, and a deeper understanding of biblical teachings on wealth, anxiety, and trust, this video is a must-watch.

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Transcript

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Welcome to the Lookout Weekly Podcast. Church of the Lookout is in Boulder, Colorado, and our vision is Jesus abiding in his presence, growing in his family, and living on his mission to transform the world with awe-inspiring love. Visit us online at the lookout.church.

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We're gonna jump in today. And uh hey, if you're a guest here, um if we haven't met yet, my name is Luke, and uh so glad to have you guys with us this morning. I know we are all in full summer mode, which is quite quickly coming to a halt over the next couple weeks. Hey guys, I'm just I can't stop that from happening, okay? It's going to happen. Just accept it. All right? Don't live in denial. It's going to happen. Um, no, uh, we're in summer summer mode, so my family does a lot of camping and uh in the summer. I know you you guys probably do too. And so it's kind of harder to stay connected to the summer, but I'm I'm glad that you're here. And as we come into um uh uh come into the presence of the Lord together, what we're doing is we're just continuing on this thread that we've been on over the last several months that we'll continue to be on. We've been subtly going passage by passage through the Sermon on the Mount. And and part of the reason we're doing that is because we're uh it's almost imagining ourselves going up to the mountain with Jesus and sitting at his feet and saying, Jesus, teach me to think like you think. And if if there's something that we need right now, and something I'm very aware of as a pastor is you spend, you know, two hours here on a Sunday morning, the rest of the week, oftentimes we're steeped in all kinds of different things, all kinds of narratives, all kinds of messages, and a way that the world works. But Jesus, his intention for us is for us to learn to think like he thinks, to live as he lived, to walk in his way, to live in the abiding presence of the Father. And so as we've been going through the Sermon on the Mount together, my prayer is that you're taking this seriously. My prayer is that you're entering into that just permeated in the way of Jesus. Because we need that in this moment, do we not? We need the way of Jesus, we need his thoughts, we need his mind, we need his intention, we need his motivation, and we need his wisdom for this moment that we're living in, right? And so as we approach the scripture together, can we do it with gratefulness? Can we do it with reverence and awe and humility that we're not reading the newspaper today? We're entering, we're we're holding open the very word of God, the bread of life today to receive it together. Amen? Okay. So if you have your Bible, open up to Matthew chapter six. And we're gonna start in verse 19. And just as you're turning there, if you have your Bibles, um, as you're turning there, or you're opening your phone or whatever, whatever, what have you, um, I'll give a little context. Last week, uh Amy joined her about a great uh message leading us through the Lord's Prayer. And we've been kind of moving into the second part of the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus is teaching us how to relate to the Father, how to see all of life through the lens of a loving Father. And he continues this thread, and we move from the foundation of living in the presence of the Father. And now he wants to take us into things that he knows matter deeply to us and affect every single one of us in this room. Okay? So with that being said, Matthew chapter 6, starting at verse 19, says this: Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, and 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 and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The eye is the lamp of the body. So if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light is in you, if the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness? No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. Amen. So one of the fascinating things about um this moment of time is we're heading into uh the US elections in just a few months. Have you guys heard about that, by the way? That's happening this year. Um there are many concerns that drive the decision decision making in our nation. Um, and so when when when Americans have been polled recently, there's a lot of things that kind of rival the top of the list. There's immigration, as you guys well know, there's uh terrorism, um, global wars, Ukraine, Gaza, all of those types of things. But at the top of the list, kind of uncontested, uh the chief concern among Americans has to do with the economy. This is from the Pew Research Center. Uh, Americans' top policy priority for 2024, strengthening the economy, okay? And so that's not news to you because you feel that on different levels, right? And uh and I think in particular in Colorado, we feel it differently than maybe other parts of the country when we look at the cost of living in Colorado. When I have conversations with a lot of you, and I get a chance to go out to coffee or have dinner, have conversations, this kind of stuff surfaces really quick. The kind of you know, uh concerns or worries or questions that we have, or how am I going to make it in this kind of uh you know, uh economic condition, in this economic environment, specifically in Colorado where the cost of living has risen by about 122%, or the cost of like homes has risen 122% over the last uh 12 years or so? We ask the kinds of questions, how am I going to afford a house? How am I going to afford rent? Uh will my social security, will my retirement be enough when I get to that age? Um will I need to downsize? Am I gonna need to move? How am I gonna afford the kind of care that I need? What about the interest rates right now? What about the cost of health care? Do I have what I need for the basic things? Will my kids have enough? Are they going to be able to even live here, right? And with all of these things, with all these questions, the kind of the underlying, you peel back the layers, the question we're under asking underneath all that is, God, do you see this? Do you see what I'm walking through, and do you care, right? Has anybody asked any of the above questions anytime this last year? Okay, you're all lying, right? No, all of us do. I ask the same questions too, because we have a deep desire, and they're not desires that uh are unimportant, actually. The desires around security, the desires around well-being that we live with, they're not unimportant to God, they're not unimportant to us. Um, and as we journey through the Sermon on the Mount, we find that the questions that we're asking are not really all that different than the questions that they were asking 2,000 years ago. And so when Jesus was delivering this sermon, which I call Jesus' greatest hits, right? He's delivering this sermon, he is, he's surrounded by men and women just sitting at his feet all around him, a whole countryside, a whole mountain, kind of a hillside just full of people that are just hungry to hear the word of God. And these people are generally poor. These people are generally not uh independent in their wealth. It's an agrarian culture. Many of them are farmers and ranchers and they're working fields and they're taxed at a very high rate because they're living under kind of a Roman occupation and oppression that they would actually, they couldn't, they couldn't build wealth like we can build wealth in this time of history. And so, even more so, they're asking the questions do I, well, I have what I need. Does the Father actually care about my actual needs? And so when Jesus taught them to pray for their daily bread, it wasn't a metaphor, you know, it wasn't just like daily bread, like a clever title for for the next devotional that you'll go through in 2025. It's like actual daily bread. God, I need bread for today. Well, can I have bread for today? And Jesus said, Yeah, you are to pray to the Father and ask him for your daily bread. It was that kind of condition. And so Jesus then, after leading them through the Lord's Prayer, he wanted to talk to them about the deep questions and concerns of their heart. It was true for them and it's true for us too. What are we, what are we supposed to do with both the questions of, will I have enough? Is God going to provide my needs? But how do we relate to money? How do we relate to wealth? How does that work on an individual basis? How does it work on a societal basis? And what happens if we get it right and we get it wrong? That's what Jesus starts to lean into. Okay, so we just read three particular teachings, kind of a triad of teachings on money. Okay? We're gonna revisit those in a second. That's part one for today. Part two is Jesus' good news invitation for all of us who have serious questions about money. All right? So that's gonna be part two in just a second. So we're gonna stay with part one. It's a triad of teachings. Now, at first glance, that we we read three teachings. At first glance, it looks like they're slightly disconnected. We read a teaching about don't sort up for yourself treasures on earth, sort for yourself treasures in heaven, right? Then he kind of moves over to the next teaching that says, the eye is the lamp of the body. You know, if your eye is uh healthy, it'll be full of light. If it's if it's dark, how great is the darkness. That seems a little odd with Jesus. We don't know what you're talking about. Um it seems like kind of a departure for where he just was. And then he gets to a third, uh he gets to a third passage that says, um, basically, um, you cannot have you cannot serve two masters. Uh it it doesn't, that's not how reality works. You cannot have two lords of your life, and so you can't serve both God and money. So he returns to the money thing. So it looks like kind of like two passages of money with just kind of a sandwich of something about the eyes in between. But uh actually, all three passages have to do with the way that we relate to wealth, the way that we relate to money and possessions. Are you guys tracking with me this morning? Okay, stay stay with me. All right, we're gonna briefly walk through the three. I'm just gonna uh this this could be a whole sermon series in itself. So I'm gonna go fast here. Um, a lot more I would want to share in each of these things, but I'll give you hopefully all we need for today. So do you not soar up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, but treasures in heaven, okay? What is Jesus talking about when he says treasures in heaven? Well, the first thing we have to know about this particular passage, when Jesus is referring to heaven, in this in this instance, the context isn't referring to after life or some other some other place at some other time. Now, that doesn't mean that Jesus didn't believe. Absolutely. Of course, he believed in life with God for all of eternity, life with the Father. But uh a lot of times when the New Testament writers, um, specifically Jesus, are talking about heaven, he's not talking about something later at a different time. He's talking about life lived with God, God's reality, uh, God's presence here on earth. And so um so when when he says, do not store up for yourself treasures on earth, but store up for yourself's treasures in heaven, there's a it's very important that we know what he's saying and what he's not saying. Okay? Oftentimes we read this and say, and we what we think is, okay, Jesus is saying that the things of this earth don't matter. Like my actual material needs, the clothes on my back, the food that I need for today, that doesn't matter. If I was really spiritual, I would just do spiritual things all the time. I would just think good thoughts, I pray more, I just the inward things that matter. That's not what Jesus is saying. In fact, the Christian message is one out of all the messages that basically gives honor to the material world. It was the Greeks who were always saying, no, no, no, the material world doesn't matter. What you really need to do is conquer your mind. And Jesus came, the reason he came in flesh was to tell us, and for nothing else, coming in the flesh should tell us, no, that this world is actually good. God created this world and he wants us to live both in spirit and in material in harmony and shalom with the presence and the reality of God. He's come to bring all of it together in unity in him. He's not kind, he's not coming to bring a dualistic earth is bad, heaven is good. He's he's coming to bring a paradigm that says, no, this is God's good world, both heaven and earth, and he wants it to be rightly ordered in him. And he's and the Father's gonna show you exactly how to do that. You guys tracking with me? And so so he's not saying that that when we uh he's not saying that the things of the earth don't matter. He's saying that when you pursue material things over God's reality, you will find that it actually slips through your fingers. It's like picking up sand and squeezing it in your in your fist. When you do that, it just comes through. And so Jesus is reordering the way we think. He's saying, if if you pursue, if you're all of your treasures are just in the things that you can see, and that's what you're trying to do with your life, it's all going to disappear. It's going to rust out, it's going to break down. I have an appliance I have to replace right now at home. I have an oven that just desperately needs to be replaced. Because that's what happens with appliances. They break down, right? And that's what Jesus is saying. Like, listen, the things of the earth, they are going to break down. But when you pursue, when you pursue a God awareness in all of things, what you're going to do, you're going to find that your heart comes fully alive, that wherever your treasure is, there will be heartbeat also. So if you want a heart that is fully alive, become aware of what God is doing in heaven and on earth and participate in that, and you will find a life that can never be taken from you. That's a good news right there. Being poor isn't morally superior to being rich. Can we just can we say that real quick? We tend to moralize poverty and wealth, and Jesus doesn't do that. Um there is a lot to be said about a life of simplicity, and we are at war, and we'll get into that in a second. Oftentimes we are at war with the things that we try to acquire over our lives, and sometimes it can become a distraction, but that does not mean that wealth is necessarily inherently evil. What's evil is when we pursue wealth before we pursue God. When we try to become independent without primarily seeking first the kingdom of God, that's when it becomes a problem, and that's when it it eats and deteriorates at our very soul. And so I've met poor people who are very generous. I've met rich people who are very stingy. I've met poor people who are very stingy, and I've met rich people who are very generous. I've met some nasty poor people, and some nasty rich people, right? So no, we're all we all need Jesus, alright? We all need Jesus. Can we just put it like that? Being poor never solved the problem. Being rich doesn't actually solve problems either. What we need is Jesus, alright? That's what we're getting at. When we treasure up the will of God, and we treasure up the heart of God and the ways of God, we enter into a life that can never be taken away from us. We enter into eternal life. And so this changes the way we see, which is why then Jesus turns into this next little turn of phrase. He talks about the eye is the lamp of the body. Now, I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this, but in in Hebrew scriptures, that was a that was a way of relating to the world that when your when your eye was full of light, it had to do with an abundance mindset. That like you saw your life, you saw your crops and your possessions and your home through the lens of abundance and healthy, like a healthy bright eye, which is it's a way of seeing the world. You know, there's an abundance mindset and there's a poverty mindset. There's two different mindsets. And Jesus is saying from a Hebrew understanding, the eye is the lamp of the body. So when your eye is healthy, you can see, you can see that we live in a world where God is intimately involved. He's sovereign over the affairs of man. And when when we're steeped in that, our eye can be open and healthy and full of light. When we forget about that, what happens is our eye can become dim, our internal eye can be full of darkness, and that's what happens when we get protective. We forget how to see the world through the lens of God's provision, through the lens of God's abundance, and we become stingy, we become reserved, we become self-preserved, which is the which is what happens. That is the that's that's the opposite side of the coin. When we are not living in the abundance of God's good world, where there is a father who loves us, what happens is we we enter into a world where we're on our own to preserve for ourselves. And what Jesus is trying to invite us into is there's two ways of seeing the world. You can see with light, or if the eye, if the eye of your heart gets dark, that darkness continues to grow. There is no end to that darkness. But then he takes it into a third movement here, and this one is very important. He takes it into a third movement where he starts to talk about who we serve. And this I believe is important to Jesus because he's rooting us into a father-centric worldview. This is the whole Lord's Prayer, the whole beginning of chapter six, everything he's doing from here on out. He's taking us into this reality that you are not on your own, that you have a father who cares for you more than you could ever imagine. But but your father has a rival on earth. And so in Jesus, in Jesus' words, he begins to give language to this rival, and he calls this rival Mammon. Now some of you guys know Mammon is this Aramaic word, it actually means possessions or property. And it's also like a Syrian god, like a demon god with a god of riches. And so as he said, mammon, you know, some of the translations just put money in there, but very specifically it's mammon. He chose that word specifically because mammon is the deification of wealth. It wreaks havoc on individuals, it wreaks havoc on entire societal structures. A society where mammon rules is where the desire for riches leads to the exploitation of the poor, where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. That's how you know that mammon is at work in a society or a culture. But what's remarkable about this is this is one of the only times that Jesus ever actually uses a very specific name for a spiritual reality. He uses the way he didn't just say the principle, hey, just be careful of the wealth. No, he said, no. You guys need to know Mammon. Mammon is after you. And it's one of the only times he names like a spiritual, uh, a spirit a spiritual ruler or a false God that actually rules over the people. And it's almost so specific that he said, I do not want you to forget that the chief rival of living in the affection of the Father is to give yourself into the rulership of this evil spirit, mammon, that wreaks havoc on the world. Are you guys hanging? So that's mammon. Mammon, you have to understand, we have to get this because it's not different. Mammon rules in our world today. Mammon also makes promises to us. The father makes promises to us. The father has a voice, and he he bathes us in the sound of his voice. But mammon speaks to us as well. Mammon has desires for you as a false God, as a spiritual reality. Mammon wants to tell you what to do and how to order your life. Mammon has a plan for your life. It'll tell you that that plan is good and full of wealth and riches and a day where you'll never have to need anybody ever again. If you just follow its voice. Mammon wants you to depart from trust in the Father and give your life to him alone. Mammon does this by always reminding you of what could go wrong yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Are you guys hanging with me? Mammon will remind you of what's at stake and what's about to go wrong in the economy, what's about to happen with your 401k, whether your social security will actually be there or not, uh, what's going on with cryptocurrency. Mammon is there to remind you all the time why you should be insecure, why you should be treading on your tiptoes, and why you you cannot rest today, but you need to be worked up so that you can survive tomorrow. That is, my friends, the voice of Mammon. Mammon will not allow you to rest. Mammon says, Mammon will tell you that it cares for you and your security. Mammon wants nothing to do with your security. Mammon wants to pull you away of the loving out of the loving affection of the father. And we all know what that feels like. We all know. What that's like to ask questions about what if this, what if that. No, that's not to say that there's not such a thing as wise planning and stewardship. But, church, we have to be careful here. We have to be careful. There's a discernment of spirits that we have to know. Bill Johnson said it like this: oftentimes fear masquerades as wisdom. Fear often masquerades as wisdom. And oftentimes what we think is just, oh, I'm planning well, I'm just stocking up for a rainy day. There's times that we should do that, and there's times that it's fear pretending to be wisdom operating in our life. But I'm telling you, it's a spirit of mammon that wants to keep us on edge, anxious about today, anxious about tomorrow, anxious about all of it. That's what mammon is doing, but that's not so for the sons and daughters of God. And what Jesus is saying, He's not mincing words. What's amazing here is that Jesus makes this very black and white. There's no words of, hey, listen, as you're doing this kingdom life thing, just be just watch the money. Just just just keep an eye on it. No, he's saying, you cannot serve the two. It is impossible. You can't have two a foot in two different canoes here. There is no, this is a black and white thing. You cannot have two masters if you're not serving God with your wealth, with your possessions, and with your security, if you're not entrusted to God, you will be sucked into the oversight or the rule of mammon. Those are the only two options that Jesus really lays out in this particular passage. So it's a stark contrast, right? And again, this isn't to say that wealth is wrong. That's not the point. The pursuit of wealth as a goal in and of itself will always leave us wanting, empty, anxious, lacking meaning. But the pursuit of God's will and priorities sometimes leads to wealth, but at least leads us to a place where we can rest in the peace and the love of God, well-being inside and out. Dale Brunner, Dale Frederick Bruner says it said it like this. He said, Thus Jesus commands us to turn our backs on the God possession and to turn our primary attention to the quests for the Father's royalty and righteousness. This is not a counsel to seek spiritual things instead of material things or inward things instead of outward things. It is God is counsel to seek God's things rather than our own. It's so good, guys. This is so good. This is a battle for our royalty and our righteousness. And if we are going to live in this world, if we're going to live in the loving rule of the Father, this is what's at stake is royalty and righteousness. And what that means is that we have to let God, let the Holy Spirit divide in our hearts where we have lived under the influence of a spirit other than his own in relation to in relation to our possessions and our provision and our security and our future. That's a good word, Luke. No, no, no, it's forced now. That's not an honest clap, because I I set you up, alright? No, I don't I don't need anything from you. Don't clap at me. Um Jesus is Lord. Alright. So I so a question that we all have to ask is are you let's just make it real practical, on a regular basis, do you invite God into your budget and your bank account? Do you got do you invite God into your financial planning meetings? That's a great question, right? Because if not, then likely that means that we're left on our own to figure things out on our own as if God is not involved in the details of our life. And you might be thinking, yeah, well, I don't I don't invite God into anything because I have nothing to invite him into. Everything I get, it just goes to paying bills. Like it comes in and it goes out. It comes in, it goes out to my mortgage, to my power bill, to my phone bill, the whole thing. And and listen, I get it, I get it. Things are tough oftentimes. And sometimes we go through the seasons, it's like, oh my gosh, do I have, am I going to have enough paycheck to get me through this next thing? Um, and I I just want to speak to you real quick and just just uh assure you that the father, the father knows your needs, and the father does not hold that against you. And but what I want to encourage you with is this even if you feel like there's not much for God to bless, God can always do more with your fish and your loaves than you can do on your own. He can always do more with the meat, with the pennies and the dollars. He can multiply what is given to him and what is submitted to him. Are you seeking to honor God with your wealth? Is that primary on your list? Megan and I, when we were first married, we had I was basically making nothing. And uh, you know, we were kind of going through the thing where our list of needs and wants was greater than our ability to do anything. We really didn't want to go into debt, so we just made a whole list of like our top ten things for a season of uh, you know, things both we wanted and and things that we needed as well. And we took a list and we just prayed it and we gave it to God and said, God, uh, we don't know how you're intending to provide any of these things, but we're gonna just hold this here and together we're just gonna believe that you like you love our not just our needs, but our desires as well and our dreams, and so we're gonna hold these before you. And it was awesome to see one by one the Lord start to provide each thing that we needed as we in unity held those before him. And I just want to encourage you, and we do that, we do that regularly. We go through times we're like, okay, what what we need is much more than what we have, right? That's all of us to a certain degree. That's we're always gonna be there, depending on the level you're at. We're always gonna be there. But with what you have is that honoring to the Lord? Are you letting him direct your finances? And number two, with what you don't have, are you submitting those to the Lord and allowing him to set himself up as provider in your life? You cannot serve God and mammon. Mammon will always take you out of God's will to go pursue riches in a different way. But Jesus is saying, do not let that happen to your soul, to your spirit, and in a second we'll see why. So, what is the result? So Jesus kind of walks us through some teaching here, and it it's it's pretty stark, it's pretty abrupt. He goes through the jugular a little bit, and he's saying, Listen, you gotta get this part right. This is what it looks like to live in the Father's heart and his will. Why does why does he say that? So he ends with this passage, and this is where we'll end today, Matthew 6, 25 through 33. Okay? This all ties in. We t we tend to read this as an isolated passage, but this all ties in, okay? Matthew 6, chapter chapter 25. Um Matthew 6, verse 25. Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air. They neither soar nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not more of more value than they? And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field how they grow. They neither toil nor spin. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith. Therefore do not be anxious, saying, What shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or what shall we wear? For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. That's such good news. See, that's the thing, is the gospel is good news for both the poor and the rich. For the poor, it's the good news that God He knows your needs and He He will provide for you. For the rich, the Gospel of Good is good news because the Gospel says you don't have to be a slave to money. You can be free and you can live as a free son and daughter. The gospel sets us free, and the gospel puts us in trusting, loving relationship with the Father. However, when Jesus says things like, do not be anxious, can I am I the only one? They can get a little frustrated with Jesus. Like Jesus doesn't know what we know now in clinical psychology about all the levels of anxiety and how all that works and all the chemical, physiological things. He he he he he words it so elementary, sometimes it's hard to take seriously. Like, do you understand? Like, you realize that birds die too, right? That like wildflowers, like you can crush a wildflower, you know. A wildflower can be consumed by a wildfire and in a hurry. Um a bird, yeah, they might not worry about what they're eating today, but a bird also flies straight into a window and just falls down. So, really, we're gonna use birds as our example here? That's what we're doing. And uh furthermore, when anytime somebody says, do not be anxious, and you hear Jesus say do not be anxious, all of a sudden a little anxiety triggers inside of you. Right? Anytime somebody tells you not to be anxious, that's the moment you start becoming anxious because you realize I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to just stop being anxious. Why does he think I can just stop being anxious, right? So we gotta name some of these dynamics as we move through this passage. But it's not as if Jesus doesn't know what could go wrong. In fact, he ends he ends this whole passage saying, Listen, you're gonna have trouble. Tomorrow's gonna have its own trouble, though. So rather than worry about tomorrow's troubles, you're gonna have trouble tomorrow. It's gonna be okay. You'll be in you'll be in trouble tomorrow. But you don't have to think about tomorrow's troubles because you have troubles today. So just be at rest. Just deal with today's troubles. I love that about Jesus. He's not pretending like birds don't die and wildfires don't if wildflowers don't get crushed. He's not pretending like things don't go wrong or that trouble doesn't exist. That's not Jesus. He's not in a denial, he's not in a denial mind frame, but he's in a simplicity mindset. He's inviting us into a way of relating to God that allows us to trust him with our future and our past. It's interesting because humans are the only living thing able to tell stories. We create narratives. We create, we're storytelling beings, right? Which gets us into a little bit of trouble. This is the source of much of our anxiety. Some anxiety is legitimately chemical and needs medical and you know and health professional uh health team to get to the root of what is going on in our body. And I encourage that. I think Jesus would encourage that. Use all the help you can get to minimize anxiety out of your life. It's not always about just praying. Prayer is is is the baseline, but there's all kinds of things that we can do to minimize anxiety in our life. So I just want to say that right now. Um that's very important. But for humans, we have a particular, uh, we have a particular instinct to tell stories, some of which are true and some of which are not true. We tell stories about our past, we tell stories about our present, and we tell stories about our future. All right. Let me just tell you right now, squirrels are not doing that. A squirrel is not telling a story about today or tomorrow. All right? A squirrel is not looking around for acorns thinking, oh my gosh. The acorns back in cheat quarter four were so much better than they were today. I don't know what happened, but gosh, things aren't the way they used to be. Somebody needs to take care of this. We need a program for this, you know. Squirrels aren't comparing last year's acorns to today's acorns and to tomorrow's acorns. They're just like, where are the acorns for today? Can somebody give me an acorn? You got an acorn? Let's go. We have an unbelievable ability to imagine scenarios. God can use that imagination for his purposes, dreaming with God. Mammon can use that imagination. The enemy of our soul, Satan, can use that imagination if we let him. But what Jesus is saying, listen, for those who are sons and daughters of God, you don't have to be anxious because you have a father who is, this is so good. He's in your today, he's in your tomorrow, he's waiting. And he's attentive to your needs. And if you're willing to let his love, if you're willing to be loved by the Father, there's some of that anxiety you can step out of right now. Because he's going to provide for you. And even the questions that still remain, how about this, how about that? To know that you have a father that you are not anonymous to. What that does is it liberates us from the inside out. And to the degree that he, the father, cares for the wildflowers and the and the birds of the air, what Jesus is saying, to the degree that the father cares about those things, when you are liberated as a son as a son and daughter, you can care about more than your needs. You can be like the Father and start to care for his good world too. And you can start to re- you can start to reset society that is controlled by mammon, where everybody is in it for themselves, for either self-preservation or for unrighteous gain. Jesus is saying, listen, you can live in such a way where your cares can be turned, and you can start to care for the things that the Father cares about, and your ability to participate with the Father is your ability to experience the life of the kingdom of God right here and right now. And you don't have to wait for that. You can you can step out of anxiety, you can be free in the name of Jesus. Anxiety in this particular context, this word anxiety is about caring for the wrong things in too much quantity. There is such a thing as about being concerned for the right things in the right amount. But Jesus is saying, listen, you're concerned about the wrong things and in the wrong amount. But when you come at home with the Father, you are able to pursue righteousness, you're able to pursue the kingdom of God. You don't have to be distracted, but you can give yourself fully to what God has for you today. The reason all this is important, we're gonna land the plane here in a second. I believe, especially in a year like this, in a time like this, the invitation is massive for us to live as non-anxious people in an anxious world. Do you guys realize that? Anxiety is actually contagious. Anxiety is contagious. You know this in your family system, you know this in your workplace. People with anxiety can be contagious. Also, peacemakers and non-anxious people can be contagious as well. And what God wants to do, I believe, in our time and our day is to set us free to pursue Him so that you can live with a full heart, non-anxious before God, non-anxious in your family, non-anxious in your home, so that you can begin to reset and we can together build a counterculture that says we don't have to do what the world's doing. We can live under the reign and the rule of the Father because He is our security, He is our provision, and He is what will last till the very end. Come on. So across the room with me here today, listen, I shared a lot. I just want to invite you in this moment to close your eyes. And we're just gonna move through a moment of reflection here. And what's at stake here is our freedom. What's at stake here is peace. And as we explore these scriptures together, we explored the difference between treasures of earth and treasures in heaven. We explored looking at with an eye that is full of light and an eye that is full of darkness. Explored the difference between serving God and mammand. Maybe there's things in your life that are pinging inside of you right now. Where you know that God is separating one from another. And so today, God, as we sit before you in your presence, we ask that you would divide soul and spirit. You would show us what is true, and God, where we have relied on our own wisdom in terms of our treasure and our wealth and our provision, God. I thank you that you're inviting us back into the reality of living in your household where you care about our needs and you care about our desires. God, where we have been blind to the needs of our neighbors because we have been so concerned with our own well-being, I just thank you, Father, to open our eyes that we can give to those in need, that we can give to the poor, that we can live generous lives towards you and towards each other, God. Forgive us. Forgive us where we've missed the mark. And today, God, I pray for this body of believers. God, I pray for those who struggle with anxiety. And God, you know that how real that is. You know the chronic anxiety that courses through our bodies and even the shame that that creates, where we feel like we're less than because we feel, I just say this is a shame-free zone. Uh that there is no guilt or shame in this room. That the Father knows your need. And I thank you, God, that any anxiety that's stemming from economic insecurity, God, I just pray that you would dismantle, that you would, uh, that you would um, God, any, any thought systems or habits or patterns that keep us stuck in a in a way of living that believes it's all on us and that you're not involved. I thank you, God, to rewire our brains, our our our um the neuroplasticity of our actual minds and ways of thinking to begin to trust you and not just in our own well-being and not just in our own uh abilities. But I thank you across this room, Lord God, that you would infuse peace and shalom, that you would infuse well-being, God, that we could live as non-anxious people in a world like ours. I thank you, God, for freedom to trust you. We thank you, God, that you care for the birds of the air and the flowers of the field. How much more a child of God. I just bless you today as a children of God to know that the Father loves you and he cares for you. I just want to read a final prayer here. This is from Clement of Alexandria. This is in the first couple hundred years of church history. This prayer to the Lord says this for the sake of knowing you, Lord, for the sake of living in union with you, help me be free of wanting what I should not have. The economy of your creation is good, and all things are given as they should be given. Nothing happens without a cause. All powerful one, I must be in the center of what is yours. And if I am there, I am near to you. So help me to be free of any fear of drawing near to you. Help me to be satisfied with less, and help me to choose, as you would choose, between what I want and what I really need. Amen. Amen.

SPEAKER_00 44:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:21

So today, can we stand together in this room? I just want to invite you this morning too, as we end our time, we're gonna have our ministry team up front. They're gonna have a purple badge around their neck. And if you want prayer uh for anything, for healing in your body, if you want prayer over relationships that you're currently struggling with, if you want prayer over your business or your career or any of the things that we just talked about, anything that's causing that anxiety, these people are here, ready and joyful to partner with you in prayer, believing that God is here, God is with us, He has not left us alone, and uh and we get to do this together. Amen. So as we end our time, you guys can come forward and receive prayer in the back. My beautiful wife is holding a connect with the sign. You should go connect with her because who wouldn't? And uh and uh if you're a guest here today, you can go back to the sign. We have some gifts for you today, and uh, and as always, um, if you have kids, go grab them um from uh lookout kids. Thank the teachers on your way out, bring the kids back up um to have some conversations. And uh, let me pray one last blessing over you today. Can you just put your hands out in front of you? I want to pray a prayer blessing over you today. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May He make his face to shine upon you, may He be gracious to you and give you rest. Amen. Amen. Hey, remember, remember next week, August 11th, barbecue. Bring legitimately, bring a neighbor, bring a friend to church. It's gonna be a ton of fun, and it's gonna be a great uh uh service and a chance to have a barbecue afterwards. It's gonna be great. Have an awesome week, guys.