about in that verse is not Noah's flood. It's probably the flood of Jordan when they were crossing the Jordan in Joshua chapter number five, chapter six, it was in its flood stage and he's referring to them. All right, so that wasn't the great flood of Genesis six. All right, so then Matthew chapter number six, the teenagers are gonna go and go across the hall and to Pastor Elijah. to the teen class. Always good to have the teenagers here. They've been going over the last few weeks on Sunday School on what is a Bible worldview. Very important material. And he was just changing it for this Sunday and standing here, I can't remember, we went over it yesterday. But Matthew chapter six, you know we're studying the Sermon on the Mount, and that began in chapter five, and so if you, how many of you need a handout? We have those handouts to pass out. If you did not receive a handout, we need one up front here. Sean needs one, anybody else? Okay. You'll see that it is lesson number 24, and we're gonna speak, probably take a couple weeks, this week and next week, on this topic, which is definitely a problem that everyone here has. So I'm guessing that when we discuss the worry, the idea of worry, that all of us have worried about one thing or another, and we're all prone to worry in certain levels. Like there's some people that it seems like nothing phases them. Well, I still think that person does worry about some things. And then there are people who the slightest difficulty crushes their day and the anxiety seems overwhelming. And so somewhere in the spectrum in between are basically all of us. Well, the Bible addresses it. In fact, it's so important that the Lord addressed it even in the Sermon on the Mount. And it is going to cover the rest of the chapter from verse 25. down through verse 35, and God willing, we'll be able to get through this in about a week, this week and next week. So, looking at verse number 25, therefore, I say unto you, okay, so because we're not worried about money, we just got through possessions. He says, therefore, because of that, what does he say? Take no thought. Interesting word there, Greek word there. Merimnao. Merimnao. If you spelled it in English, it would look like M-E-R-I-M-N-A-O. Merimnao. And it is the same word found in Philippians chapter 4, verse 6, where it says, be careful for nothing, or don't be anxious, don't worry. And it's three times in our text in Matthew. Okay, take No thought is the way that it's rendered in this passage. So verse 25 again, take no thought for your life what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor yet for your body what you shall put on. Is not the life more than meat and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much, much, he says, better than they? Okay, and so should we be tree huggers who stop the clearing of brush because of field mice, and therefore the whole city can be burnt down, right? No, birds, we are much better. We are to have dominion over the earth. The Lord considers us to be much better than the fowls. All right, and in verse 27, which of you, by taking thought, could add one cubit to his stature? Otherwise, I'd be as tall as Brother Randy, amen. Why take ye a thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They toil not, neither do they spin. Yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothed the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of low faith? Therefore, here we go, take no thought, saying, what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed? After all these things do the Gentiles seek, for your heavenly father knoweth that you have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought, third time there, for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Something I like to tell myself all the time, sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. What does that mean? Don't borrow tomorrow's problems today. Okay, and so it's an interesting passage of scripture, and I hope that the Lord will use it in our lives, but I think it's interesting to know that once the Lord was able to get through this very thick morass of wrong doctrine and wrong interpretation of the Bible, which we have dwelt on for some time now, he's now, and he's pointed, hey, it wasn't about the outside, it was about your heart. But I say unto you, it's about your heart. Now he's gone into the heart and he's drawn the entire crowd into an introspection about their heart. And he says, hey, quick, there's something in the way. It's your possessions. And now in his love, his mercy, and his tenderness, he's gonna say there's something else that's a problem. It's your anxiety. Now there is a capacity for worry. All of us have some kind of capacity. But I cannot carry the load, I've learned this in the ministry, I cannot worry for everything that's upon my plate and everything that's on your plate. All I can do is pray and let it go, okay? And otherwise, this preacher would never sleep, okay? And it is true that we can only handle so much. But the Lord said, I created you, I knew that. And so I'm not intending for you to carry all this load that you're carrying. Now, if anything today, this should appear to you, even if you're not necessarily a worrier, this should appear to you as the tenderness of a great God who absolutely loves His people. And the tenderness of God is seen in the examples that He gives like, hey, I take care of the grass, which is not important. And I clothe it and I make it beautiful. and you're much better than the grass. And if I take care of the grass, I'm gonna take care of you. And then he says the same thing before that about the fowls of the air. He says, you know, the fowls of the air, they don't do anything, but I feed them. I feed them. The Lord loves that. Isn't God a tender God? That would go out and as the sun creeps around and the earth wakes up in its various places and the birds begin to sing, the Lord follows the horizon, the sun going where it is, and He follows its course and personally feeds all of the birds. That is an awesome God. And what God has tried, that ought to overwhelm your heart. And the Lord's saying, I mean it to overwhelm. I should overwhelm you. that the Lord should overwhelm you. And in that overwhelming feeling, he says, you are much better than them. I know the birds, I love the birds, the Lord says. Now isn't that tender, Lord? And then he says, but you're much better than that. So the protection, the provision, the promises of God are exceeding, as 2 Peter chapter one tells us, exceeding great and precious promises. And yet what do I find in my life? Worry. Totally unnecessary. Totally unnecessary. I have found myself up in the middle of the night worrying about a problem, and I think the worst will happen, and man, if you could witness the way the clouds come across my dreams and keep me awake at night, wake me up, and then I, it is a dark cloud. And then it is like the waves of the sea overwhelming me. and it's never been as bad as I dreamt it to be. And I've learned, I hope, to tell myself, trying to get the best of my emotions, when I'm really distressed over some things, saying, hey, in your life, it has never come out as bad as it looked. And I say, yeah, I have to admit that. And so this will probably be fine. And you know what else? I tell myself, and especially if it is as bad as I think, I need a good night's sleep to be able to deal with it, because God will have an answer for it. And so we have to master this lesson to really function well and the capacity grows. So what are you afraid of today? Are we afraid of the future? I sure am. Anybody here, are you gonna admit that you're, or say you've never had a fear of the future? Right, I fear of the condition of our church? Yeah, I could make a long list. Worry about this wicked world that my grandchildren are now being born into? Oh yeah. Yeah. You know, there are plenty of fears that you have. Fears, fears all around you. Worry. And the devil, he's a master at making those fears the most prominent thing that you have. You fear that you can't pay the bills. You fear that you're not gonna have enough in your retirement. You fear that you're not going to keep the job that you have and you may not be able to get a better job or another job and on and on. I think, I believe that no matter how many worries you conquer, the devil has an enormous, so that in your life you will always be fed worries, reasons to worry, reasons to worry. I see Miss Kara here ready to have a baby. I remember that my, when we were having kids, obviously more than 20 years ago, Debbie would say, it can be fearful. And then she would tell herself, I love the Lord, I'm saved, and plenty of babies have been born before this one. You see, and we deal with this, these feelings and these emotions. And I'm not here to say the answer is to ignore your emotions. That would be an absurd way to live. But I am here to say that God can conquer those that are out of control. And God has an answer. So as we get into this, three times in this passage, the Lord says, merim nao. In other words, stop worrying. And all three times, as you see, first in verse 25, and then 31 and 34, that in all three of these times, it's translated, it's perfectly accurate. Take no thought. Take no thought. It's not to be our conscious thinking process. So it's interesting that if the Lord, and this is, by the way, it is written in a imperative mode. So we have, just like English, we have indicative, interrogative, and imperative. And so you go back to English class, like if you're as old as I am, you have to get the cobwebs off. But the imperative mode is a command. You know, where you'd say, clean your room, when your parents would tell you when you're young. That's not an option. It's not meant to be even a question. It's a command. And so this is a command. Now, the Lord doesn't give us commands that he doesn't expect us to fulfill. OK, he's not there. He's not that kind of God. If he did momentarily, I don't want to go on a rabbit trail like that. I'm tempted. But could you imagine if God gave you commands that you could not answer? The closest thing, and I don't want you to be confused, I'm not talking about the Ten Commandments. Those were God declaring holiness to prove that we're sinners. But I'm talking, and he made the provision because he knew we could not keep those commandments so that the guilt of our breaking of those commandments was put on Christ on the cross. But after we're saved, all the commands of God in the Bible are given in a way with an expectation that we as his people would obey those. It's not just wasted words, or if you're a champion Christian, then you can, or if you're gifted, or if you're above average, that isn't the case. Because the Lord makes a promise that he will empower you to do what God wants you to do. And so anytime you see a command in the Bible, try to think of our family motto when I was raising my kids. The motto was, you can always do what you should do. You can always do what you should do. That was our family motto, raising these kids. There wasn't anything that God wants us to do that is out of reach because God promised to empower our efforts to do it. He'll make up the difference if we allow Him to be there in our lives. And it's not our effortlessness. It's not like we sit back and we're lazy. We're still the ones that have to go through the difficult times and put out all the effort. I'm not talking about earning your salvation, that's free. I'm talking about the commands of God after salvation. But God has an answer and He wants to carry us through those things. When I look back at the things that God has required of me through my life, and I thought, for sure, there's no way. One thing I'm glad is that He hasn't revealed those big steps in my life all at once. Because I would have been totally afraid to go forward. I would have said, there's absolutely no way, God. And I know that I would have argued and argued and argued with God. But one step at a time, the Lord gives us the clarity to know what God wants us to do at this point in our lives. And he says, don't worry about the next step. I'll tell you when you're ready. Awesome God, because he knows our capacity. I want to get into our outline today. I don't know how far we'll get, keeping in mind our time. But notice here the condemning of anxiety. And I started a couple lessons ago trying to mark the verses that go with each point. And so you notice here that the entire text is on this point except for verse 33. We call that the cure for anxiety. So if I can get through some of the notes today and maybe next Sunday talk about the cure. But the condemnation or the way that the Lord is saying it's wrong. There should be no argument here that God does not want you to live a life of worry. because of His presence. Ultimately, the cure, as you see, is all wrapped up in Him. Just got to read verse 33 again. You'll notice what he says. It's all wrapped up in God. The first point there to write in is the actions. The actions expressed in verse 25. Therefore, I say unto you, take no thought for your life which ye shall eat or which ye shall drink, nor yet for your body what ye shall put on Christ, is talking about the actions here, specifically about your needs. And we could generalize this to mean all of your physical needs, but he's speaking specifically about food and drink and clothing. The Lord knows that you need those things. He says that later in verse number 32. For after all these things do the Gentiles seek, for your heavenly Father knoweth that you have need of those things. God knows your life. And He's telling you in this passage, these actions are necessary. I know that you need a place to live out of the cold. And I know that you need clothing to wear. I know that you need food. And if we all got really clearly honest, we'd say that we live in abundance of those things. Amen? We are rewarded by God in the freedom of our country, which is always at stake. Just because the presidency has seemed to have been improved here in another eight days, right? Doesn't mean that our freedoms are not without peril. Freedom is to be defended constantly and we sacrifice to do so. But because of the freedoms that we have enjoyed, our country has the greatest abundance of any nation in all of the history of our country because I believe we set our country up closest to the principles of God's word than any other in history. And so we have been benefited and blessed, but yet even in our abundance, what do we have a tendency to do? Worry like crazy. Now I'm gonna tell you, the more you have, the more you have to worry. I remember when I first started out in the ministry, I was still finishing up Bible college, and I was hired on after two years of Bible college. I went on staff as an assistant pastor, and I remember I was in charge of the junior high team, big church. I had probably 40 junior high teenagers, you know? and just the seventh and eighth graders were that many. And I was in there preaching to them one day and telling them, trying to tell them that life is not about the things that you accumulate. And I mentioned to them that I think I could put everything I own on this platform, right? And back at that time, I probably could because somebody had given me, as a college car, how many of you remember that old Yugo? They remember that? And Mike Simmons, remember, he's probably driven that when I had it. And that Yugo was so convenient for me. I was young and athletic and strong. And so if I needed to, I could parallel park in Chicago. I just nose it in, get out of my car, walk around the back, pick up the bumper, and throw it where it needed to be. and uh... it was a three-cylinder car i think i have i think i've had bigger lawnmower engines okay and uh... but anyway it was a good college car was the right price and uh... only a twenty seven thousand miles on it i blew the engine when it had like thirty five thousand miles But I said to the junior high, I could fit everything. And I was in this one chapel room that had a pretty small, it was a very small platform, but that car could fit there. And I could fit everything I owned in the car. Even the books that I had collected, which I was, I didn't have a lot. I probably had 50 volumes of books and I probably had a little closet full of clothes and some other things, a couple boxes of tools. And I said, I could fit everything I own in that car and I could fit the car on top of this platform. But then later we collect a lot more, don't we? And life becomes too complicated. And now our life is filled, filled with plans and goals, and not bad things, but house, and then we have vehicles, and then, you know, I haven't had a Yugo since, and I don't ever recommend buying a communist car like that. But, you know, the accruements that we gather through life cloud and cover us with lots of things that we need to worry about. We're running around often taking care of the things that we have which are an abundance to have. Simply like, hey, you can't just buy a new laptop, you have to buy the accessories that go with that laptop. Now you have to have more to take care of the abundance that you are given. And the temptation the devil puts in there is for you to worry. Things can make you worry. Children can make you worry. Jobs can make you worry. Money is a worry for many things. If you're in debt, my heart goes out to you. If you'll see me, I'll try to help you. I can counsel you through the debt to get out of debt. But debt is one of those things that puts your back up against the wall and makes it almost impossible for you to do anything about. It's suffocating and creates this kind of worry. These are the actions that the Lord talks about in verse number 25, and he says, I never intended for you to carry that. I give you something to make your life better. I didn't mean for it to cause problems. Be like if you wanted to be nice to somebody on their birthday and give them a cake, and then you knew that the cake caused them terrible problems. I never intended for you to take it that way. You know, I don't think a car is that important, God says. Hey, when I want to move people, I can move you. If you don't have a car, I'll give you a car. God is the God that owns the cattle on a thousand hills. He's not worried what GM is doing. He can take care of us. And I give you this example that when I was first surrendered to the ministry at 14 years old in 1989, January of 1989, I remember my grandmother saying, well, you still need to go to college so you can have a career to fall back on. And I listened, I mean, I wasn't gonna mouth off to my grandmother. I listened to her, she said, because if preaching can't feed your family, right, then you need something to fall back on. And back then, I told my grandmother, I said, the problem is, If God can't feed me, what good is the gospel that I preach? Because of the promises of God, God made that promise to take care of me. And in 30 years, now next month, 30 and a half, right, 30 years and one half year of full-time ministry, I've been overfed. And I've been well taken care of all of these years. You see, God is in charge of all this if we let Him. The actions, number two, or letter B here, the arguments, the arguments, arguments, arguments, A-R-G-U-M-E-N-T-S, arguments. So first of all, here is the composition of life. Look at verse 25. The Lord's first response is, what is life about? So the second half of verse 25. Is not the life more than meat and the body than body than raiment. Life is a good deal more about than just your meals and your clothing. It's a good deal. There's a lot more to life than what you wear and what you eat. And the Lord brings this up and he says, here, I'm gonna argue with you on why you should have no thought And it is, in this context so far, the longest of all of the topics that we, so far, this is lesson 24, you've never seen me come up here and say, here we have nine or 10 verses to cover. So he spends a lot of dialogue in the word of God to tell you, and he's arguing, here's a good reason why you shouldn't worry, because your life is made up a lot more important things than just food and clothing. You need them. But hey, you need heaven more. You need food, yes, I'll take care, don't worry about that. You need eternal life more. He says, what about raiment? Don't worry about that, I can clothe you. Your life is more than that, it's about the will of God. He that doeth the will of God abideth forever. Finishing the task I've given you is more important than what you wear. So the Lord is kinda clear in the air here, arguing why we should give up on worry, and the first thing he talks about is the composition of life. Number two, he says the care of God. You know, your life, the reason you should not worry is because of the composition of life. Hey, life is more than this. Number two, I take care of my own, God says. You can find this if you go down to verse number 26. Really, the whole of the text. But he says, first of all, he takes care of the fowls in verse number 26. Behold, the fowls of the air, for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor do they gather into the barns. So he says, here's a group of people. I mean, even the squirrels collect for the winter, right? Even the little squirrels will take and make a nest for themselves. But he says, let me tell you, I created a group that can't take care of themselves and don't care about taking care. Look, the only thing they do is fly toward warmer weather. That's it. They don't sow, they don't plow, they don't toil, they don't reap, they don't gather into barns. And what is the Lord saying? He said, are you not much better than they? Much. I like that. Much better. God is great. His care for you, He says, just the birds. Not one of them falls without Me knowing, but you're much more important to Me than the fowls. The care of this world, the Bible says, by Him all things consist. Everything is in the hands of that Almighty God, and that same God takes care of everything continuing in His plan And he says, I can take care of you. So the fowls, when you go down to verses 28 through 30, he also takes care of the flowers. If God will take care of fowls and flowers, don't you think he'll care for you? That's why he says, oh, you have little faith. Verse 20, go down here to verse 28. And why take ye thought for raiment considered the lilies of the field? how they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin. Yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all of his glory, he said, and the Lord, he knew Solomon's glory. Solomon had so much money that when he couldn't do anything else with the gold that brought in, he just made how many, bunches, shields of gold, huge shields of gold just to decorate his garden. He was running out of projects to do. He built a house for himself, then he built a house for one of his wives, and that's the problem that he ended his life, was his lust. But he had so much that he even made a place for him to sit, a throne. And he had these overlaid with gold and ivory. Look, you couldn't get any more opulent than this man. The kings of England and the kings of this world have never surpassed, as the Bible said, the glory of Solomon. And the Lord says, but the lilies are better. They look better than Solomon. And he says, I take care of them. I clothe them. And he says in verse 29, verse 30, wherefore if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is and tomorrow. Now, what is the glory of the grass? The Bible says it withers away. And man is like the glory of the grass. What is he saying? It's not very important, right? Like if I brought a set of flowers up here, like this beautiful arrangement in front of me, and said, I wanna make, which one do you like best? And I held this up, and then in the other choice was a blade of grass. And you'd say, wow, pastor, you're pretty, you need some sleep or something, because that doesn't compare. And the Lord says, you're far more important than the grass of the field. So what a promise from God. So the most important thing is what? To be right with God, not to have a big paying job. Are you following me? The most important thing is that you know your life is where the blessings can be reached. Meaning whatever you have to do, changes you have to make, we have to make in order for our lives to be right with God because wherever that is, that's the place. Right there. I need to be there. That's the priority. Because if I'm there, I have everything taken care of. So the most important thing is not what you have in abundance, your retirement, your social security, any of that. Not your house, not your things, not your belongings. And the Lord says, it's so good, I'll take such good care of you that you're not even to worry about it. Not even supposed to worry. I hope this is a help to you. I hope the Lord's gonna use it in our lives. Next week we'll continue and hopefully finish this lesson. and we'll pick it up right there. Let's have a word of prayer. We got about 10 minutes before we're supposed to start the morning service. Father, thank you for your blessings. Thank you for the theme Sunday. I pray that you bless, Lord, the morning service as we get started, that your name might be glorified in everything that we do. Thank you for the hymn story today and the sacrifices of men like Patrick of old that literally risked everything in their life to bring people to know you. Bless this church. Give us great and abundant blessings in Jesus' name. Amen.