Bible Text: Matthew 6:24-34 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: Trinity 2023 | The Christian cares more than anyone in the world, and yet the Christian is the most carefree of all people in the world. Our Lord tells us to cast our cares on Him, because He cares for us. He tells us to be carefree, because our worries are His problem. They aren’t ours. It is a form of sacrilege to take what belongs to God and give it to ourselves. He says our worries are His. Leave them to Him. It is not for the children to lay up for their parents. It is not for Christians to worry about the future. We are children, we are God’s children, and it is not ours to prepare the future for our God, but for God to prepare it for us.
When it comes to worrying, Jesus points us to the birds for three reasons.
First, because if He had pointed to the many times God provided for people in the Bible, you could always doubt whether He’d provide for you. He cared for Elijah, had the ravens bring him bread, but I am no Elijah, so why would I expect this for myself? This has to do with how much you are worth – Elijah might be worthy of God’s providence, but are you, a sinner, who can’t expect to be taken to heaven before you die in a chariot of fire? So Jesus points you to the birds, because they aren’t worth much. Two are sold for a penny, Jesus says. Animals don’t have the worth of human beings. Cat Stevens sang a song entitled, “I love my dog more than I love you,” and I’m sure that’s the sentiment of many a dog owner, especially when we compare the kindness and loyalty of a dog to the cruelty and fickleness of people around us. But whether or not you like your dog or your bird for that matter more than you like some people, you have to admit that humans are worth more than animals. This is the truth of creation. God created us in His image, to love Him, to know Him as children, in a way animals simply cannot. This is the truth also of our redemption. God did not become a sparrow or a dog; God became a man. So even if you feel worthless yourself because of your sin or even if you look at others and see what an awful mess they’ve made of their lives, the truth is that God decides how much humans are worth, and your Lord Jesus has placed the worth of man at the life of God, because that’s what He gave to redeem us. So look at the birds, see that your Father takes care of them day by day, and know that you are worth infinitely more.
Second, Jesus points to the birds, because they are constant reminders to you. God wants you to know the worth He places on you every single day. God placed the rainbow in the sky as an everlasting covenant with man, that He would never destroy the entire earth with a flood. The birds are the constant sign that God will take care of His Christians because He values you. If the birds served no other purpose, if they provided no other benefit, this would be more than enough, that every time you hear them chirp and every time you see them fly, Jesus is telling you to look at them and see that your Father cares even for them; and He cares far more for you.
Third, and this is I think the most important, Jesus points to the birds, precisely because God cared for Elijah in a miraculous way, and for the people of Israel in the wilderness in a miraculous way, dropping bread from heaven, and He does not want you to think that this is how He will take care of you. He might. If it comes to it. But that’s not the promise here. The promise here is that He’s going to take care of you in a totally natural way. The way He set up creation. Look at the birds. They do what birds naturally do. Which doesn’t include sowing and reaping and gathering into barns, but does include building nests, hunting for bugs, and migrating halfway across the world. They do what God made them to do, and God cares for them.
So it is with you. Jesus isn’t telling you here that you should sit back and do nothing, and he’ll have roast beef miraculously appear on your table. The birds don’t sit back and do nothing. They do bird things and God provides for their bird lives. So you do human things, the things God has called you to do, and God provides for your human lives.
The objections that people throw at Jesus are all so much nonsense. “Jesus tells me not to worry, so I’ll just leave it up to God and eat potato chips on my couch every day and watch sportsball and not do any work.” No, even the people of Israel had to get off their couch every day and collect the manna. God requires work of His human creatures. Just as the sparrow that doesn’t fly ends up in the cat’s mouth, so the man who does not work, neither shall he eat. The birds of the air may not gather into barns, but humans do, and that’s how God provides for us.
The other objection comes from those who say that we would never get anything done if we didn’t worry. The birds work on instinct, they say, but we work by worrying. It’s worrying about my country that actually gets me to the voters booth, its worrying about my marriage that gets me to work on it, its worrying about money that gets me to do my job, so on and so on.
But there’s a vast gulf between worrying about something and caring about it. To care for something is to love it, to seek after it. To worry is to act as if God is not in control. These are opposites. You should care about your country, your city, your church, your family, your job, even about your money. But you have no business worrying about their future. The non-Christian can’t care about anything without worrying about losing it. The future is uncertain. But the Christian can care about country and city and church and family and college, care about them deeply and not worry about losing them, because the future is certain, we have the favor and love of the God who gives us everything, and we have His promise that He will provide for us.
Seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. Care first about the Gospel and all else will follow, worry about what you can’t control will fade away, and care and zeal for what God controls will take its place.
When you are worried about anything, and you will be – don’t think I’m painting some unrealistic picture of the Christian life here, as if Christians never worry about anything because we’re too holy for that and we’re immune from all the anxieties of life: no, that would mean you’d be without sin, and it would mean that Jesus is wasting His breath in telling you not to worry; He tells worriers not to worry, just like a mom tells whining kids not to whine.
So first, when you worry, no matter what the worry is, your health, your money situation, your kids’ health or your kids’ faith, your spouse’s love and devotion to you, the stability of your job, when you worry, care about the Gospel first: Remember. Jesus Christ is risen. Your God is full of love for you. The One who holds all things in His hands, who created heaven and earth, has counted your days before there were any, and has provided an eternal future for you, free of all sin and pain and misery. He bought it with His own suffering and death. God died, God suffered, God who cannot do these things because God can’t suffer and God can’t die, God did them, He took your human nature into His Person, so that He could remove the curse of sin from you, by becoming a curse Himself, and so be your Brother, and make His Father your Father, and His Spirit your Guarantee that you are a child in the family of God, where you have all the rights and privileges of a son and daughter of the King of the Universe, now and forever. That means you have nothing to worry about. Your God adores you.
But you do have things to care about. The fact that you are a child of God makes you care about things that matter, God-things. So that you care more than the heathen possibly could. Your God gave you this country. So you care about it, not simply out of some chauvinist patriotism, but because you know that God has provided a peaceful country to you so that you can live a Christian life in peace and quietness. Your God gave you your talents and your work. And you care about working hard and making money, not because money is some end in itself, but because you can use it to love others and especially to support the church, where you hear the Gospel and receive the body and blood of your Savior. God gave you your family. You care about family, not because kids are yours to do with as you please, but because they are God’s and He’s entrusted them to you so that you raise them for heaven. There is an eternal purpose to it all.
When the Gospel shines, it sheds light on the true worth of everything, shows us why we should care. And at the very same time, the Gospel swallows up all worry. Because the Father who raised His Son from the dead can and will deliver on all His promises. His Church will stand. His Word will endure. And He will use everything else, even bad things, even your financial woes, even your crosses and your struggles, to accomplish the triumph that belongs to the baptized children of God.
In a few short minutes we will be installing Dr. Ryan MacPherson as the first Academic Dean of Luther Classical College. This is a momentous event when we think what the future could hold. If we ignored Jesus’ words, ignored the primacy of the Gospel, we would worry a lot about this college. We’d forget all that God has given us so far, the millions of dollars donated, the students excited to come, the support of 150 congregations throughout the country. And we would worry instead about money. We would worry about putting up buildings in time. We would worry about how we are going to house the nearly 80 students who have already announced that they want to come in Fall of 2025. We would worry about a million different things that could go wrong or that haven’t gone exactly as we hoped or planned. But the Gospel takes away all worry and replaces it with the care that belongs to God and His children. We care about this college not because of pride of ownership, not because of anything that could pass away, but because through this college, we are asking God to advance His Kingdom to the next generation and to generations to come. So as we work, and especially as you work, Ryan, for this college, you have this beautiful promise – seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, put all your God-given talents to the task He has set before you, do it with diligence and love of His Word and your family and God’s people, and God will add all other things. He promises it. He will not fail. His is the future, and that’s where we want the future. In our Father’s hands. That’s where you want the future of your lives, the future of your country, the future of your church, your families, your school, our college, you want it all in God’s hands, because those hands have been pierced for us, and this is the everlasting pledge of His love and faithfulness to us. So to God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we commend everything and we do the work He sets before us, knowing that for Jesus’ sake, He will bless us and keep us faithful to the end. Amen.