Matt 6.19-34

Do not worry

(matthew 6.19-34)

Jason Procopio

I need to be up front with you all from the beginning. Last week I said that the subject of that text—prayer—is one of the most difficult areas of the Christian life for me.

The subject of today’s text is THE most difficult area of the Christian life for me, and by quite a large margin. There are a few areas which give me anxiety, but by far the largest source of regular stress in my life is illness. Not even illness itself, but the potential that someone in our family will get sick.

This stress was fairly low-key for most of my life, but it absolutely went through the roof when we had kids, because kids get sick all the time, and for all kinds of reasons.

Recently this anxiety has been getting worse. We’ve all seen the headlines about how our immune systems are all weaker because of the confinements; so I’ve just been waiting for it to happen—it’s been like having a bomb in your house that’s ready to go off without warning. And it’s happened several times just in the last few months: it seems like someone in our house has been sick since August.

This week, Zadie (our three-year-old) threw up in her bed, in the middle of the night; she wasn’t even sick, she just started coughing and coughed so hard it came out. (Yes, if you don’t have kids yet: there are solid joys that await you.) So I went into efficiency mode; I wasn’t particularly stressed or afraid, but I was standing with her, helping her in front of the toilet, when all of a sudden I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I got incredibly dizzy; I saw stars, to the point where I couldn’t see anything else; I started sweating profusely; my muscles felt like jelly, to the point where I collapsed to my knees. I was this close to passing out. I told myself everything I needed to tell myself—both practical and biblical—and nothing changed. It was the first actual panic attack of my life.

I’m telling you all this because the day after this happened, I sat down to prepare this sermon—and reading the text, I knew I was going to feel like the biggest hypocrite in the world if I didn’t confess up front that the subject of today’s text is a very real struggle for me. So in everything I’m going to say today, know that I’m not sitting over you; I’m with you; I need to hear this as much as, or more than, anyone else here.

So that being said, think back over the last couple weeks. Jesus teaches us to pray in v. 7-15: he gives us a prayer in which he lays out the most essential areas of our lives, with the promise that God knows everything we need before we ask, and will give us what we really need. Then he comes back to the subject he started before, in which he encourages us to practice our righteousness, not to be seen by men, but to receive the reward which comes from the Father. This reward, as we saw, is God himself: an ever-increasing knowledge of God, an ever-increasing vision of his glory, and an ever-increasing joy in him. If we obey God for God and not for men, God is exactly what we will get. He is the promised reward.

And that’s where Jesus ends in Matthew 6.18: “And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

That’s the background, and Jesus presents what follows in two parts; the first part centers on this reward we seek—the treasure we lay up for ourselves in heaven—and the second part centers on anxiety. He moves from treasure to anxiety for one simple reason: the more you want something, the more you fear to lose it. I believe he put these two together because if our treasure is the treasure we are laying up for ourselves in heaven, then we can’t lose it. So we need not fear or worry. (And by the way, I’m not suggesting that there aren’t biological or medical reasons for anxiety; there are, and we shouldn’t be afraid to seek appropriate treatment if that’s the case. But for most of the anxiety we feel in our lives, this is how we’re called to deal with it.)

Our Treasure (v. 19-24)

In v. 19, Jesus continues in the same subject he was just in before, except now instead of using the word “reward,” he uses the even more evocative word “treasure.” V. 19:  

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal…

It’s not accidental that Jesus uses this word “treasure” here. He’s talking about money, or the possessions we can obtain with money. So many stories have been written about how the pursuit of a treasure can become an obsession (think of Treasure Island, or The Hobbit, or more recently, Ready Player One). We don’t need anyone to explain why this pursuit of treasure takes such a hold on us because we get it. We all know what it’s like to have possessions, to have money, and to want more.

Randy Alcorn actually did the math: roughly “15 percent of everything Christ said relates to this topic — more than his teachings on heaven and hell combined” (The Treasure Principle, 8). He talks about this a lot, because he knows that of all the things that will preoccupy us, accumulating wealth will be one of the most difficult to shake.

When I say “accumulating wealth,” I’m not just talking about greed—Jesus isn’t just talking about greed either, as we’ll see in the latter part of this passage. The reasons why we want more stuff—more money, more possessions—can be various. It may be because we feel like having more money would give us more security. It may be because more possessions would give us a certain level of comfort. It may be because we know how we would look to other people if we were wealthy.

Whatever the reason, we all know what this desire for more is like—and we know, because very often, that desire drives us. While our desire for treasure may be less fanciful and exciting than what we find in Treasure Island, it is no less attractive. 

It may be the house we want to own one day. It may be a computer we salivate over (that’d be me). It may be the home decorations you see in the windows of stores, or (for some of you) a certain pair of shoes you want to add to the thousands you already have. It may be a vacation house in the mountains or on the beach—or even just a great vacation. 

Or it may be something less “material”, but even more attractive… 

It may be the job we’re hoping to get. It may be the perfect marriage we want to have, or the perfect kids we want to have.

None of these desires are bad. But when they take on the weight of treasure in our minds, we find ourselves coming back to them over and over; we start making decisions based on what we think will get us these things more quickly; we start accepting some opportunities and losing others because we are preparing for our treasure.

We all understand what it means to want something so badly that it is constantly in the back of our minds, driving our decisions and our thoughts.

The problem is that none of these things will last: moth and rust destroy, thieves break in and steal. Time takes the things we love, and even the people we love. Nothing in this present world truly comes with a lifetime guarantee.

That’s why Jesus tells us not to pursue these things. It’s not that these things are bad things, they’re just bad treasures—they will not last. So rather than pursuing these things as our treasure, he says (v. 20):

…but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.

The only things which are worthy to be considered as “treasures” are those things which time and wear cannot touch: our reward, our treasure in heaven, our eternal and ever-increasing joy in our God.

So the question is, how do we do this? How do we lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven?

We actually saw that two weeks ago. We practice our righteousness for the reward that comes from our Father. We obey his commandments, because through our obedience, we know him better and we love him more—that’s the treasure. That’s the reward.

So you see how incredibly pragmatic Jesus is here. He doesn’t tug at our heart-strings; he doesn’t try to manipulate us into wanting something that we shouldn’t want. He simply says, “Make a good investment.” He doesn’t deny that a treasure on earth is appealing. He just reminds us that it won’t last. It’s not a good long-term investment.

So, he tells us, "Seek the treasure that will last.” 

Already, the strength of that simple, pragmatic argument should be enough. But he goes further. V. 21: 

For where you treasure is, there you heart will be also.

We’ve heard this verse so many times that it might be easy to pass over it. So take a minute and think about what he says. Where you treasure is, there you heart will be also. All throughout the Bible, the “heart” refers to the center of who we are. It includes our emotions, our reason, and our desires. If I want to get to know you, and find out where your heart actually is, I won’t ask what decisions you’ve made for Christ, what convictions you hold, or what you believe or know. Those are the wrong questions. If I want to know where your heart is, the question I need to ask is, “What do you want?” 

To know the state of our hearts, we need look no further than whatever we want more than anything else—whatever we see as our treasure.

Or to put it another way, we don’t own our treasure; our treasure owns us. If something becomes our treasure, our hearts will automatically follow.

So it’s not surprising, is it, that Jesus gives this illustration of “eyes” in v. 22-23:  

22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, 23 but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! 

That sounds awfully mysterious—it’s an image that might not speak to us in the same way today—but in this image he’s saying the exact same thing he just said, in v. 21.

The eyes are how we see where we are going and what we are doing: they literally let light in. What we see determines where we put our feet, where we put our hands, etc. Eyes in the Bible are often used as an image in the same way as the heart: both pictures speak of the focus of our attention and desires. 

Jesus quite simply says that if our eyes—our desires, our attention—are focused on righteous things, we will grow in righteousness; if they are focused on unrighteous things, we will grow in unrighteousness. The things we focus on, the things we pursue, will shape who we become.

Our hearts will always follow our treasure. Whatever we desire most rules over us. Which is the point he makes in v. 24:  

“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. 

We want to say that God is our King, that God is our Master… But if we’re honest, a lot of us have to admit that there are some things we love a good deal more than him. 

The incredible and terrifying thing we have to see here is that whatever we love the most starts off as our treasure, but becomes our master. Money is meant to be our servant, something we master in order to live; but far too easily it becomes a tyrant, controlling our decisions and influencing our behavior. 

And if money doesn’t draw you, replace it with whatever it is you love the most. Whether it’s money, or a home, or our jobs, or our families, whatever we desire the most becomes our king; it becomes our slavemaster; it becomes our ruler. 

The same is true with God—the only difference is that God is a good master, a master who wants and provides what is best for us.

So either we serve money—either we serve our earthly treasure—or we serve God. There is no other option.

And you cannot have two competing masters. You cannot serve God and money. You can serve God while having money; you can serve God with your money; but you cannot serve God and serve money at the same time.

Why? Because if two opposing things are competing for your love and desire, necessarily you will love one more than the other. And your love for the one will make you hate the other, because the other is fighting against it, trying to get you to love it less. Either you are mastered by money (or whatever it is), and you will ignore God because he’s telling you to love it less than him; or you are mastered by God, and you will put your money, your possessions, your jobs, your families, to use in service of his kingdom.

But you can’t do both. You can’t have one foot on either side of this fence. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

do not worry (v. 25-34)

So Jesus has just laid out this lengthy encouragement to seek the right treasure—not the reward that comes from man, not the satisfaction we find in the things of this earth (however good they may be in themselves), but rather the treasure of knowing God and loving God more and more, forever.

It is vital that we never read the next passage (v. 25-34) out of context. Everything he’s said about treasure in heaven intensifies and informs what he says next. 

He says (v. 25):  

Therefore [because you are laying up for yourselves treasures on heaven and not on earth] 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. 

I said this at the beginning: this is incredibly difficult for me. I’m a naturally anxious person—I always have been. I worry about finances (because Paris is expensive); I worry about people’s perception of me (getting married was a big stresser for me, because suddenly I had this woman whom I really wanted to impress, living in the same house as me, seeing all of my weaknesses and failures); I worry about car accidents (that’s why I drive like an old man); and yes, I worry about illness (the COVID confinements were actually wonderful for my emotional life, because we weren’t exposed to any germs for about a year).

But really—if I take a second to take stock of my situation, I have to admit that most of the things I’m worried about feel huge at the time, but are, in the grand scheme of things, relatively inconsequential. Jesus never promises that nothing bad will happen to us. He’s telling us that if these are the things we’re worried about, then we’re thinking far too small. There are much worse things to be worried about than getting sick, or losing your job, or losing your home. 

What we should be worried about is the great end-goal of our lives—we should be worried about the treasure—about joy and satisfaction and peace that won’t fluctuate with time or circumstance, but that will last forever.

And that treasure, we have it. We’re laying it up for ourselves in heaven; God is guarding it for us, and providing it for us. If we are in Christ, then the only truly legitimate source of worry in our lives—whether or not we can get this treasure—is gone. The only truly legitimate source of worry in our lives, we don’t have to worry about it anymore.

So here’s what Jesus is saying… If God is generous enough to give you this treasure, which is infinitely greater than we can imagine, and eternal… If God is generous enough to give you this treasure, don’t you think he’ll be generous enough to give you the much smaller things you need? That’s his point at the end of v. 25:  

Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?

It’s not that these things aren’t important; it’s that they’re not ultimate. Life is much more than our needs, and in Christ we already have the most important needs met. If he’s good enough to give you these ultimate things, he will be good enough to provide for your other needs too.

And then, Jesus gives several examples, to reassure us. V. 26:  

Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

V. 28:  

28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the 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?

My anxiety in the face of such generosity on God’s part shows me how small my faith is. If we fully believed God is as good as he says he is, as generous as he says he is, we would not worry. If he takes care of his creation, of things that aren’t made in his image and which aren’t his children, he will all the more take care of us. Our anxiety is groundless.

And not only is our anxiety groundless; it is useless. Jesus hammers this home with this simple question in v. 27:  

And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?

Anxiety contributes nothing. It can’t solve any problems; it can’t give us more time to enjoy things; it can’t make our pain go away. Anxiety is utterly useless.

Fear—a healthy fear—can be useful. We stay away from wild animals because they can eat us. We hold our babies tightly because we’re afraid of dropping them. We buckle our seatbelts because we’re afraid of car accidents. We are right to be afraid of these things, and to take measures to prevent them, because we know that they are legitimate dangers.

That’s not anxiety. Anxiety is the undercurrent of dread that says something bad is going to happen…even though we have no real reason to believe that it will. It’s like walking outside under a completely blue sky and being afraid of getting struck by lightning. It’s one thing to see the clouds and hear the thunder and to seek shelter; it’s quite another thing to seek shelter when the sky is blue. The first is wisdom; the second is insanity. That’s anxiety.

Our anxiety contributes absolutely nothing—it cannot add a single hour to our lives. On the contrary, the time we spent anxiously turning an imaginary problem over in our minds is time we could be spending doing something actually beneficial (like sleeping). Being worried does nothing to help us, and everything to harm us.

The only truly legitimate worry we might have has been taken care of for us. Christ lived and died and was raised, to give us the treasure. That’s proof number 1 of his generosity. So if God has given us the harder thing, he will all the more give us the easier things (like providing for our needs). 

In addition, God is generous to his creation in general: he feeds the birds and clothes the flowers. That’s proof number 2 of his generosity. So if God provides for his creation in general, he will all the more provide for the needs of his children—we are worth more than birds and flowers.

Now what we see here should be obvious to us, even if it’s difficult. In the face of all this overwhelming evidence that we need not be anxious, Jesus actually commands it: DON’T be anxious. V. 31:  

31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 

We often wonder how Christ can command us not to do things we can’t help doing. We can’t keep ourselves from feeling anxious when anxiousness comes on us. So how do we obey this command?

Here’s what happens in my head when I begin to worry—or at least, here’s what I try to do; it’s a struggle for me to remember it. I imagine God is physically in the room with me, and I’m telling him what I’m worried about. A kid in Zadie’s class is sick, and she’s been around him, so now I’m worried. I imagine God listening calmly, with a smile on his face, as I lay out all the excellent reasons I have to be worried. I tell him the horrors I have in my mind, which we actually lived the other night: the crying and the vomit and the cleanup and the time it will take to get back to sleep, and the possibility that someone else in the house will catch whatever she’s got… 

I lay all this out before him, and he looks at me, and (not at all unkindly) says, “So what?”

Whatever the worry is, I imagine myself laying it out before God, giving him detailed reasons why I’m right to be worried, to validate what I’m feeling. And God (again, not at all unkindly) says, “So what? Do I not know what you need? Didn’t I tell you I’d take care of you? Didn’t I tell you I’d give you everything you need?"

When I actually remember, and take the time to imagine this scene, my anxiety tends to shrink fairly quickly.

There are certain things I could describe to God, to which he would not respond in that way. I could tell him how my desire for him is dwindling, how I’m starting to love my sin more than him. If I describe this to him, he’ll say, “You’re right. That’s serious. Let’s get to work taking care of that.”

Nine times out of ten, though, I’m pretty sure his response to whatever worry I bring to him would be that same loving “So what?”

Jesus isn’t telling us to be stoic; and he’s not telling us to never feel something we can’t help feeling. He’s telling us to not give in to it; he’s telling us to fight it. And he’s already told us how: we put our faith to work, and we trust. 

In this chapter, we have had promise after promise after promise—that God will be glorified, that he is reigning over our lives and this world, that he will provide for our needs, that he will protect us from sin. And on top of all these promises—or rather, underneath them all, the foundation of them all—we have the promise of the treasure which is already ours, which God has given us and which we are laying up for ourselves. If Jesus is not a liar, then we have nothing to worry about. 

So how do we obey this command to not be anxious? We trust in our Father’s goodness, and we rest in his promises. We lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven.

The incredible freedom these promises and commands offer is kind of overwhelming. I don’t have to worry that God won’t provide for the basic needs of my life. I don’t have to worry that he’ll lead me into temptation. I don’t have to worry that he’ll stop reigning over my life. I don’t have to worry that he won’t do his will in my life. I don’t have to worry that he won’t give me the reward he has promised.

That makes up most of the things that should occupy our minds: how to have what we need, and how to live happy. So if we don’t need to worry about these things…what are we going to think about instead?

V. 33:  

But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.  

In God’s hands, we lack for nothing. “The young lions suffer want and hunger, but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing” (Psalm 34.10). So we don’t need to put all of our energy and all of our resources into laying up treasures for ourselves on earth. We don’t need to expend all of our efforts to get the things God has promised to provide us himself. Some effort, sure—we have to do our jobs and buy groceries and sometimes we may not know how we’ll get it all done. But we don’t need to worry that we won’t have what we need—the mental and emotional bandwidth that worrying about ordinary things takes up is huge…and now, in Christ, that bandwidth is freed up, so we can pursue what really matters.

His kingdom. His righteousness. Learning what he is like. Learning to be like Christ. Putting our faith into practice and discovering that God’s commands are actually good for us. This is where our focus lies now, and we do it, trusting that while our focus is over here, on these things, God will give us everything else we truly need. We will lack for nothing. We may not have everything we want, but we will always have everything we need.

And that’s why he ends the way he does, in v. 34: 

Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Didn’t we just learn to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread”? If we really believe God will provide for every need we have today, we are able to live free of anxiety about tomorrow. 

Seek the treasure…and let God worry about the rest. Work hard, but do it for him (not because you’re worried about not having what you need). Plan well, but do it because it’s wise (not because you’re worried of what will happen if you don’t). And if things happen to not go the way you hoped they would, don’t worry: your Father knows what you need, and he will provide for you. Rest in his provision, and watch as he does the impossible, and provides for your needs in ways you haven’t yet imagined.

Conclusion

Now there is no better way to finish this than by taking Communion together. (To be completely transparent with you, I desperately feel the need for this today.) Because when we take Communion, we remind ourselves that in Christ, God gave the ultimate provision for our ultimate need.

Separated from our Creator because of our sin, we need to be reconciled with him. But we can’t do it on our own, because our sin is still on us. So Christ takes that sin off of us and puts it on himself, and he puts our sin to death with himself on the cross. And in exchange, he gives us the perfect life he lived—the one thing we need to be united to God. 

This exchange happens by grace, through faith. And when it happens, we have the assurance that if God provided for this need, he absolutely will provide for every other need. Romans 8.31-32:  

31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

Yes, he will. When we take Communion, we remember this truth, and we remind one another of this truth. So let us take the bread, which represents Christ’s body, broken for us, and the cup, which represents his blood, shed for us, and let us invite God to reassure us this morning—to give us assurance of his grace to provide for this and every other need.