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Seek First
Matthew 5:25-34 | Shaun LePage | September 10, 2006
I.
Introduction
A. One of my favorite commands in the Bible comes from the lips of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount: “*Do not worry*.”
I think most of us see this as next to impossible—as though anyone who claims to obey this command is denying reality.
B. A businessman ran into a friend of his—a stockbroker who had always had problems with ulcers and high blood pressure.
“How’s your health?” the man asked his stockbroker friend.
“Great, my ulcers are gone and I don’t have a worry in the world!”
The man asked “How did that happen?”
The stockbroker said, “It’s easy, I hired a professional worrier.
Whenever something comes along that I need to worry about, I tell him about it and he does all of my worrying for me.”
The business man couldn’t believe it.
“That’s incredible.
I’d be interested in something like that.
How much does it cost?”
The stockbroker replied, “He charges $100,000 a year.”
The businessman then asked, “How in the world can you afford to pay him $100,000 year?”
The stockbroker said, “I don’t know, let him worry about it.”
C. But Jesus did not intend for us to deny reality in order to obey this command.
He repeated Himself three times in 10 short verses.
“*Do not worry*.”
Is this possible?
Can you obey Jesus’ command to not worry?
I think Jesus knew this would be a tough one for most people.
He used most of His words—nine out of 10 verses—to deal with the issue of worrying.
Then, in one short verse He taught us how we can be free of worry—without denying reality.
D. CPS: Jesus taught us to refuse an earthly perspective and pursue a heavenly perspective.
II.
Body—Matthew 6:25-34 (Go one section at a time.)
This passage has two great commands: one negative and one positive.
The negative comes first.
A. “Do not worry”—Refuse an earthly perspective.
1. (NASB95): 25 “*For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life, /as to /what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, /as to /what you will put on.
Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?*”
a) “*For this reason I say to you*…” What reason?
(i) This links vs.25-34 with the previous passage—vs.
19-24.
There, Jesus taught that storing up treasure in heaven is better than storing up treasure on earth.
Seeing with spiritual eyes is better than seeing with physical eyes.
Serving the God of heaven is better than serving the wealth of earth.
(ii) So, the natural question we would have is: “I agree that storing up treasure in heaven is better, and seeing with spiritual eyes is better, and serving the God of heaven is better, so how do I do it?”
“For this reason,” Jesus gives us two commands: One negative (a put-off command) and one positive (a put-on command).
b) “…*Do not be worried*…” Put off worry—do not do it!
Easier said than done?
Yes, but not as impossible as some of you might think.
Jesus gives us some wonderful pictures here to understand how to put off worry.
When we understand where worry comes from, we can begin putting it out of our life.
Look first at the rest of this sentence.
c) “…*Do not be worried about your life, /as to /what you will eat or what you will drink; nor for your body, /as to /what you will put on.*”
(i) First, He said, “*Do not be worried about your /life/.*”
Second, He said, “*Do not be worried about your /body/*.”
Two major areas of worry.
We worry about our lives—the length of our lives.
We worry about our bodies—the quality of our lives.
(ii) He got very basic.
We are not to worry even about what we will “*eat or drink*” to sustain life.
We are not to worry even about the clothing on our backs—what we will “*put on*” our bodies.
This is the most basic possession affecting the quality of our lives.
How well we will live?
How hard will life be?
That’s basic.
Food, water and clothing.
Jesus commanded us not to worry about basic needs.
d) Maybe you’re thinking, “I don’t try to worry!
I just do.
It’s like headaches.
I don’t try to get a headache—I just do.
I can’t help it.”
In a sense, that’s right.
Worry—like a headache—just happens.
But, they don’t just happen for no reason.
Worry and headaches are the natural result of a certain cause.
If you hit your head on something (as I have a tendency to do at a certain spot in our home), you’ll most likely get a headache.
If you have clogged sinuses or some kind of physical deficiency, or lots of stress, you’ll most likely get a headache.
(i) My wife, Beth, got an epidural when she was delivering Josiah back in 2002.
The anesthesiologist made a mistake and drained out some of Beth’s spinal fluid.
It was painful at the time, but the epidural soon kicked in and we thought it was all over.
Josiah was born, they spent the night in the hospital and we took him home the next day—everything was fine…for a few hours.
Soon after we got home, Beth was miserable—she had headaches unlike she had ever had before.
If she was not flat on her back, she was in excruciating pain.
Why?
Because the fluid the doctor had accidentally drained was supposed to be around her brain.
The loss of just a small amount of that spinal fluid caused her to have incredible headaches.
She had to go back to the hospital where they did a patch of some kind and she was soon free of the headaches.
(ii) The point is, there’s always some reason why someone gets a headache.
Stress, head injuries, careless doctors—there’s some reason.
If we understand those reasons, we can prevent or treat headaches.
If we understand why we worry, we can prevent or treat worry.
Jesus gives three reasons in vs.25-32 that help us understand why we worry:
(a) Look at the question Jesus used to finish v.25: “*Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?*”
1. What’s the expected answer?
Yes! Life is “*more than food and the body *is *more than clothing*”!
There are more important things in life.
And with this question, Jesus gets at the first reason why we tend to worry: 1.
We worry when we have wrong priorities.
When food, drink and clothing—the stuff of earth—becomes our priority in life, we will worry.
Life is more than food and the body is more than clothing!
2. The word “*more*” highlights the fact that Jesus is talking about our priorities.
Are food and clothing necessary?
Yes, but there’s much more to life than these things.
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