Our scripture reading is from the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew chapter 6, and we'll read from verse 24 to the end of the chapter. You'll know that the Lord Jesus is teaching his disciples what it will mean for them to be faithful citizens of the kingdom of God in a fallen world. And he writes, he speaks in verse 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 stuff." Now, mammon. It's an ancient Syriac word, it means money, yes, but more than that, anything and everything that would take the place of God at the very center of your existence. You cannot serve God and anything else. 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 not life more than food and the body more than clothing? 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? 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 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, that is the unbelieving world, 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. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow. For tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Let us pray. Lord, you have given us your word that it may be to each of us a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. that it may make us all of us wise unto salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. And so we come, Lord, seeking your promised help, the help of the Holy Spirit. Enlighten our minds, Lord, we pray. Warm our cold hearts. So bring your word to us this night with grace and with power. that it may take root within us and shape us and style us the more into the likeness of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Come, Holy Spirit, come. Let your bright beams arise. Dispel the darkness from our minds and open all our eyes. And we ask it all in the name of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. Well, please turn with me in your Bibles if you have one with you. To these verses, these familiar verses, I'm sure to many of you, perhaps all of you, are Lord Jesus Christ teaching on the Sermon on the Mount. In these chapters, Matthew 5 through 7, Jesus is saying to his disciples, this is how the citizens of the kingdom of God are to live in a fallen world as his beloved children. And notice those concluding words. This is how the citizens of the kingdom of God are to live in a fallen world as his beloved children. You'll notice that the opening word in verse 25 is, therefore, Jesus is drawing a conclusion and providing an application from what he has just been saying to them. And what he has been saying to them comes to some kind of crystallized moment in verse 24, no one can serve two masters. That's the fundamental issue that the Lord Jesus Christ is presenting to his disciples. You cannot, no matter you may think you can, you cannot serve two masters. You will either serve the one and hate the other, or hate the one and serve the other. And Jesus wants his disciples to understand that citizens in the kingdom of God, the beloved children of God, are to be identified in a fallen world by the unequivocal lordship, of God. The Lordship, the unequivocal, unqualified Lordship of God is to be the hallmark of the way they live in a fallen world. They're to live such distinctively different lives that people will be asking, from what world are these? And that's the great issue, I think, that we need to ask ourselves this evening as we stand on the threshold of a new year, as we look out into another year of the grace of God. Does my life, does our life communally and congregationally, does our lives, do our lives evidence that Jesus Christ is Lord? Can people look at who you are, what you are, what you say, what you don't say, what you do, what you don't do, where you go, where you don't go, and conclude for him, for her, Jesus Christ is Lord. Three times in these verses, Jesus says to his disciples, do not be anxious. Three times. Do not be anxious. And this evening, I want to reflect with you on these words of our Lord Jesus. and especially on the antidotes that he provides for corrosive, unbelieving anxiety. There will be six points. The first five will be somewhat preparatory and introductory to the sixth one, which will have three points. It's the way I smuggle in 10 points. So the first five are introductory, but preparatory. For the sixth, where we find our Lord Jesus giving his disciples and giving us antidotes to corrosive, unbelieving anxiety. I want us to notice, first of all, that Jesus is addressing a plague that is found in every age and in every nation. The plague of anxiety. Now some of you will know that the word in its original Greek root form has the idea of a divided mind. The anxious are those whose minds are divided, they're bifurcated. They're looking at circumstances and seeking at the same time to look to God. And they have a divided mind, what the Old Testament Scriptures call a divided heart. They're not united and unified in the gaze that they are summoned to as citizens of the Kingdom of God in a fallen world. You'll know perhaps these words in Hebrews chapter 12, where the writer is appealing to Jewish believers who are in danger of turning back from Jesus Christ. And he says to them, look away to Jesus. But actually, the Greek says something a little more dramatic. It says, looking away really from yourselves to Jesus. Your focus is all wrong. You have a divided view of yourself and life and the world. You need to recalibrate your mind. You need to set your gaze away from your circumstances, away from yourself, to Jesus. Worry and fear cause division in our minds and hearts. We end up looking in two directions. We worry about all kinds of things, don't we? We worry about our future, our present, our past. We worry about finances. We worry about health. We worry about our children and our parents. We worry what people think about us. We worry about the absurdities of our woke world. We worry about the cost of faithfulness, the state of the church, the state of the nation. We could go on and on and on. We allow life in all its multifacetedness to so impact us and distract us that we have divided minds. We are incapable often of unifying our beings and fixing them where they need to be fixed. And Jesus here is addressing this plague. He wants his children, his believing servants, to know how to cope with and deal with and address the multitude of anxieties and worries and fears and burdens that can so cripple us. I should pause here for a moment, I think, to say this. Everyone everywhere worries. Non-Christians, people who have no living faith in Jesus Christ worry, and they have every cause to worry. If you're here tonight and your hope and trust before God alone is not in Jesus Christ, you ought to be worried to the depths of your being. That may be in the righteous mercy of God, a blessed providence to awaken you to the reality of your need of a savior, a mediator, a rescuer, a redeemer, to make you right with God and to fit you for the presence of God. People who are not Christians have every cause to worry, but what I want to do this evening is to focus on people who profess to be Christ's. We're called, are we not, to be holy, to be different, to be set apart. We are forgiven sinners. We're heaven-bound forgiven sinners. The creator of all things is our God. Should that not make a difference to how we think about the exigencies of life, the unexpected providences of life, the trials and the troubles, the perplexities of life? I sometimes wonder what the Christians in Philippi made of Paul's letter when he comes towards the end in the fourth chapter and says to them, don't be anxious about anything. But in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God that passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. I sometimes think we read passages like that very flatly. We forget that life isn't one-dimensional. Life is multi-dimensional. And people hearing these words for the first time must have been shocked, be anxious about nothing. Is this remotely realistic? Isn't Paul overstepping the mark? Isn't he expecting too much? Be anxious about nothing. Paul, look around you. Look at the world we're in. Did you know my family circumstances? Do you know I've just lost my job? My wife has died. My children are abandoning Christ. My neighbors think I am off my head. And you're saying be anxious about nothing. Jesus here is addressing reality. But let me say secondly, what Jesus is not saying. Jesus is not saying here, don't be concerned about your life. He's not saying don't be concerned about the lives of people you love. He's not saying don't be concerned about your nation going to hell with a handbag. He's not saying that. He's speaking here about unbelieving worry and anxiety. He's speaking about that anxiety that is corrosive, that is divisive. He's speaking here about allowing life's troubles and trials to shape what we are and to determine who we are. Christians are not to be spiritual stoics. We're not to walk through life unperturbed, unmoved. by the troubles and the trials and the bizarreness and the God-forsakenness of the world in which we live. Jesus is not saying that we are to be calm and untroubled and unruffled by trials and troubles and tribulations and difficulties and problems. He's speaking here about corrosive, unbelieving anxiety. Remember how in John 12, is it verse 28 or thereabouts, we read that Jesus was troubled, troubled in his spirit. Now, two chapters later, same word he says to his disciples, let not your hearts be troubled, but he's troubled. What's he saying? He's saying to his disciples, don't allow corrosive, unbelieving anxiety and worry about you, your circumstances in life, the world around you, to divide you and to bifurcate your commitment to and your resolve to serve the Lord with an undivided heart. But he knew what trouble was, but the trouble in his spirit did not cause a bifurcation of his spirit. He was not divided in his spirit, but he was deeply troubled in his spirit. Thirdly, by way of preparatoriness, notice what Jesus does not say here. He does not say, grow up and man up. Ignore your anxieties. Forget about them. Jesus takes the anxieties of his people seriously. He doesn't say, be positive in your thinking. He's not a self-help guru. Somebody believes in the power of positive thinking. He knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust. And so he doesn't come with silly, vacuous platitudes. Fourthly, Jesus urges, actually commands his disciples to look, verse 26, and to consider, verse 28. Verse 26, look, it's a command, it's in the imperative mood. 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? And then verse 28, and why are you anxious about clothing? Consider, 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." Now do you see what Jesus is doing here? He says, look, consider. It's a verb that is saying, engage your minds. He wants them to be thinking citizens of the kingdom of God. He wants them to base their lives not on how they feel, but on how they think. I'm just remembering a 4 minute, 15 second rant that Alistair Begg has on the internet. on worship that's all about feeling and not about thinking. It's typically Alistair. I've known him, we've been friends for 45 years. We first met at an Edinburgh University inter-varsity meeting. We were both speaking and I thought, my, he's got more illustrations in one sermon than I have in a year. But he's just himself, he's a great fellow. And he has this four-minute rant And it's just wonderful and he's really putting a sword into worship that's feeling based. And here Jesus is saying to his disciples, look, stop, pause, look, consider. It's a verb that is saying engage your minds. Think about God's care for his animal kingdom and extrapolate from the lesser to the greater because you're of more value than many sparrows. It's something, it's so basic, isn't it? You know, I don't know about you, but my great need is not to hear profound sermons on the Operad Extra Trinitatis Indivisa Sunt, or on the Extra Calvinisticum. I need someone to say, Ian, remember who God is. Remember who you are. Remember that you're of more value than many sparrows. I heard someone recently preach in this passage and he said, the next time you go for a job interview and you set out your, what do you call it, your resume, we call it CV, curriculum vitae, and you set out your resume and you present yourself as best as you can, then there's a little bit at the bottom. Is there anything else you would like us to know about you? Why not write this? I'm of more value than many sparrows. No, you may not get the job, but my, you'll have a gospel opportunity to witness. I was sharing this with a congregation recently. Our oldest son, David, was being interviewed for a partnership in a legal firm in London. And he had gone through all the various interviews and came to the final interview with the other host of partners. It was for a position as a litigator. And one of the partners said to him, what gets you up in the morning? questions you're not anticipating. What gets you up in the morning? I said, what did you say? He said, well, I thought of saying, my three children get me up in the morning, because they do. But I thought, no, that's not what gets me up. So he said to them, the glory of God gets me up in the morning. And then he smiled and said, my three children as well. They said, oh, we weren't expecting that. And he got the job. He got the job. Jesus is saying, Stop and think. look and consider. The devil always wants us to base our lives on how we feel and on the circumstances that surround us. Jesus is not here waving a magic wand and removing all the difficulties and the trials and the troubles. He's not saying just think or imagine they don't really exist. He's not saying that in the slightest, but he is saying extrapolate from the lesser to the greater. If God clothes the grass of the field. If God cares for the lilies and the sparrows, will he not much more care for you? And then the fifth preparatory point, we're getting to where I want us to go. Jesus pinpoints the reason why we worry. Do you know why you worry? About anything. And I do mean anything. Look what Jesus says in verse 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? Oh, you of little faith. Oh, you of little faith. What is Jesus saying here? He's saying, let me tell you why you worry. You worry because you forget who God is and who you are. We forget who God is, that he is the living God, the creator, the sustainer, the director, the consummator of all things. that our Heavenly Father has ordained all that comes to pass. There isn't a rogue atom in the cosmos. There isn't one circumstance that touches my life that has not been permitted and purposed, purposed, purposed, purposed by the loving, gracious, kind-hearted Heavenly Father. John Owen, someone said to me recently, can you preach a sermon without quoting John Owen? I can, I just don't. But I can, I can. Well, I think I can. Owen wrote, and if you want to know where he writes it, ask Ryan. I could tell you, but he could tell you better. Unacquaintedness with our mercies is our trouble as well as our sin. Unacquaintedness with our mercies is our trouble as well as our sin. You know what Owen is saying. It's sinful to forget who God is and the grace of his love to you in Jesus Christ. But it's not only a sin, it's a trouble. And so ten times in chapter 6, you can count them yourself, ten times Jesus says to his disciples, your father, your father, your father. There are more personalized references to God as the father of his children in Matthew 6 than there are in the whole of the Old Testament. Now God was ever the father of his people. But the fatherhood of God, as it were, comes out of the shadows with the revelation of the Son of God. Just like the Holy Trinity is the opening verses of Genesis. Don't let anyone tell you Genesis 1 isn't about the Holy Trinity. It absolutely is about the Holy Trinity. that the Trinity comes out of the shadows with the coming of the Son of Righteousness. And so it is with the fatherhood of God, 10 times. What do you think Jesus is doing? Those of you who are teachers, I'm sure there must be some teachers here, what's the essence of good teaching? Repetition, repetition, repetition. Why? Because most people are dumb. Most people are dumb. Slow to learn. Good teachers, I say to my students before they sit an exam, three rules. Number one, do I understand the question? Number two, do I really understand the question? And number three, am I sure I really understand the question? And they sort of look at me, and without fail, I mark exams and think, you've never understood the question. 10 times the Lord says, your father, as if he's saying, no, no. Are you getting it? Is it sinking in who God is and who you are? So often our anxieties can be traced to a failure to grasp how greatly God loves us. I have this long quote here from B.B. Warfield, but discretion probably is the better part of valor. It's a magnificent quote. He's, I'll paraphrase it rather than weary you with it, he's preaching the sermon on James 4, verse 5, where we would read, it's difficult to translate, but the Lord yearns jealously over the spirit that he has caused to dwell in us. And the language is the language of a distracted lover. Through James, God is saying to his people, you're loving this world, but I jealously yearn over the spirit I've placed within you. I love you. My spirit has come to indwell you, to consummate, as it were, and to cement the love I have for you. What are you doing running after other lovers? And Warfield is makes this wonderful point that even in our sin, when He sees us immersed in sin and rushing headlong to destruction, He doesn't turn away from us. Why? Because He yearns over us with a jealous love and the Spirit of God within us has been placed there. to seal to us and cement to us that jealous love of God that would have us love Him undividedly. Number six, that's the preparatory bit out of the way. The great burden of these verses. is the Lord Jesus giving his disciples three antidotes to corrosive worry and anxiety, three antidotes. Let me just simply tell you what they are. Number one, verse 32, your father knows. The Gentiles, the unbelieving world seek after all these things and your heavenly father knows that you need them all. Your father knows your circumstances. He knows your troubles. He knows your trials. He knows everything because he has ordained everything. He knows every detail that touches your life. as we were thinking this morning, not simply by His divine omniscience, but by His human personal experience. He knows your frame because it's His frame. He knows your dust because it's His dust. Your Heavenly Father knows every circumstance, the dark and the bright. and they all have an ultimately gracious purpose. He works all things together for your good. Do you know why? Because he loves you. With an everlasting love, with a love that will never let you go, He will, on His oath, ultimately work all things together for your good. Our Lord Jesus Christ did not cruise to glory. He suffered. He experienced disappointment, rejection. As I mentioned this morning, there was a point in his life where he said, my life has amounted to nothing. I'm a waste of space from the sinless lips of the sinless son of God in our flesh. But the father knows he's not ignorant of you or your circumstances. And we need to remember that He knows, He knows, He knows. But then secondly, verse 26, not only does He know, He cares. Look at verse 26. Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Do you know you're valuable? You may be the most down-on-yourself Christian on planet earth tonight, but I want to tell you, you're more valuable than many sparrows. You're so valuable to God by His grace. that he did not spare his only begotten son, but delivered him up to be a propitiation for your sins. He damned him that he might not damn you. That's how valuable you are to God. Little you who have put your trust in Jesus Christ feebly, maybe feebly, You're so valuable to God that he bankrupted heaven to make you his own. And that's why we never get beyond the cross because the cross is the great revelation of the love of God and the care of God for his children. Cast all your burdens on the Lord. Remember 1 Peter 5. Actually, we need to read it in from verse 6 because you have a substantive verb followed by a present participle. Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God. Well, how do you do that? Casting, and it should be casting all your burdens on Him. Why? For He cares for you. What is heart humility before God, casting all your burdens upon him? Why? Because he cares for you. And because he cares, we can then extrapolate from that, that his delays, As we see it, his delays are not due to a lack of knowledge or indifference. Remember John 11, Jesus hears about Lazarus, and you have these striking words, because he loved Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, because he waited two more days. Because? His delays were for the glory of God and for the good of his children. Your father knows, your father cares. And then thirdly, your father commands. And that's the point of verse 33. And Jeremiah prayed about that in his prayer. I hope you were listening how helpfully he led us in prayer. But seek first. But you see, we tend to not read passages in their completeness, in their organic completeness. Your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all, but seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be added unto you. What's Jesus saying? He's saying, I know anxieties are there. I know your life is beset with unexpected providences, difficulties, troubles you didn't foresee. Look out. Look out, seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. Seek first the interests of your father, the spread of his kingdom, the practice of living righteously. I don't know about you, but I guess most of you, probably all of you are much like me. One of Satan's primary principle devices with me is to get me to look into myself. That's the most disheartening thing I could ever think about, but I do all the time. He wants us to look in, not just at our failures, but at our imagined graces. Look in, because the moment you start looking in, you become bifurcated. You become divided in your mind. Your father knows. Your father cares. Every day, ponder Calvary. Every day. You never get beyond Calvary. Never graduate beyond Calvary. Your father knows, your father cares, your father commands. Seek first his kingdom, give yourself to what he has called you to be and to do in the midst of a fallen world. And so he concludes, verse 34, therefore, don't be anxious about tomorrow. Why? Well, tomorrow might not come. Wouldn't that be good? Tomorrow might not come for you, for all of us. The Lord may descend from the heavens with a shout. Dead in Christ will rise. We who are alive will be caught up to be with them together. And so we shall be forever with the Lord. Don't be anxious about tomorrow. He isn't saying, this is where some people just misunderstand this. He isn't saying, don't bother about tomorrow. It's righteous and godly. to think ahead, to make plans, to prepare well for your own life, the life of your loved ones. Congregations need to think well and thoughtfully, but don't be anxious about tomorrow. Do it under the knowledge that your Heavenly Father knows, your Heavenly Father cares, and your Heavenly Father commands, the troubles of tomorrow will take care of themselves when they come. We don't know what 2024 has in store for us, and that's fine. We don't need to know, do we? We don't need to know because our God reigns. Some of us are dispositionally prone to anxiety, temperamentally. That's just how we're wired. Others of us, by and large, can walk through life relatively, relatively unperturbed. But Jesus isn't calling us to cultivate a biological or psychological temperament. He's calling us to anchor our lives in who God is. This may come with age, although I hope it's not just age. But the older I get, the more I think everything in life is shaped and determined by my doctrine of God. a good friend of mine, probably the best known Reformed Baptist in the world. I'm going to tell you this not to make a party political point. He said to me recently, he said, Ian, give me your best argument for baptizing infants. And I smiled and I said, the immutability of God. Oh. I wasn't expecting that. In the past, I'd have said, well, let's think about God's covenant with Abraham. I thought, no. The immutability of God. How you think of God is the most significant thing about you. Do you know that? What do you think of God? Hopefully at least this, that he who is from everlasting to everlasting, who is infinite and eternal, is being, wisdom, power, justice, knowledge, goodness, and truth. He who is, is my father. Loved in Christ with an everlasting love. That's who He is. And if you are a Christian, that's what you are. May God bless to us his word. Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, brothers and sisters in Christ, lift up your heads and open your eyes, and by faith receive the blessing of the triune God, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.