We’ll finish up the section from last week before we return to the gospel of Mark. There’s some significant things coming up in the gospel of Mark that we want to give attention to, but we’ll finish up this wonderful passage regarding the fear and the anxiety and the symptoms of those things and the source of anxiety. But before we hear from the Lord, let’s ask his blessing once more upon the reading and the hearing and the reception of that preaching and the preaching. Let’s pray once more together. Heavenly Father, we do come again to you. We are eager to hear your word where we come to sit at your feet and be still and to listen. We do pray, Lord, help us to settle our souls and to focus our hearts. Help us to receive from you that which is most important, this your word, because there you give us yourself. You teach us of the way of salvation of Jesus, of your grace and blessing in your kingdom. For it’s all these things that we yearn and long for. We pray, Lord, open our eyes and our hearts that we might accept by faith all that we hear. that it may change our lives and our hearts, that we would be transformed into the image of our Savior, Jesus Christ. Lord, we need the protective, corrective care of your word. Lord, so we pray, your spirit would go forth as your word goes forth with it. Lord, and we pray this all in Jesus’ name, and all God’s people said, amen. Amen, Luke chapter 12, please give your full attention, this is the word of our God. I’ll be reading verses 22 to 34. Of Jesus, this says, verse 22, and he said to his disciples, therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on, for life is more than food and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens, they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, And yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds? And which of you, by being anxious, can add a single hour to the span of his life? If then you were not able to do, a smaller thing is that, what are you anxious about? The rest. Why are you anxious about the rest? Consider the lilies, 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, which is alive today in the field, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith? And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you. Fear not, little flock, For it is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with money bags that do not grow old, with the treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches, no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. The word of the Lord. Amen. May he has added his blessing upon his preaching now. May be seated. Well, I recall when I was younger, the political season, there was actually a season, you know, coming up to election where there’s all about politics. And that season, it seems to have be year round now. And it’s designed to divide and hate is a tool of the devil that comes from these things upon us so often, continuously now. And we’re looking at this text in God’s Word that speaks to the issue of anxiety and worry and fear, not just in regards to a political season, but in all of life, and even the anxiety that comes within our own hearts. We come again to Luke 12, and we’ll finish up this passage. We saw last week the symptom of anxiety, right, poor thinking, and the source of the problem of anxiety, and that source, according to our text, according to Christ, was little faith. Little faith. Recall again the time that we’ve looked at quite a number of times in these past number of months and last week. On the sea in this great storm, the disciples were terrified for their lives, and they asked Jesus, don’t you care? We are perishing here. And Jesus is there all the while with them in the boat in the storm. But they’ve chosen to focus on the great storm rather than Christ and to neglect the reality of the presence of their even greater Savior, little faith. Indeed, and then the other place where we see this little phrase, this phrase little faith is with Simon Peter as he walked across the water, right? In Matthew chapter 14. which says this, but the boat by this time was a long way away from land, beaten by the waves, for the wind was against them. And in the fourth watch of the night, he came to them, that is Jesus, walking on the sea. When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified and said, it is a ghost. And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them saying, take heart, it is I, do not be afraid. Peter answered him, Lord, If it is you, command me to come to you on the water. And he said, come. So Peter got out of the boat and he walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid. And beginning to sink, he cried out, Lord, save me. Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, O you of little faith, why did you doubt? And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased, and those in the boat worshiped him, saying, truly, you are the Son of God. He is there with Jesus. And he takes his eyes off of Jesus, his master. He saw the wind, and he was afraid. He feared, and it began to sink. He took his eyes off the Lord, and down into the water he went. Oh, you of little faith. And why is that? because his eyes were fixated on his circumstances rather than on his Savior. Or think, as well, of the illustration of this in the Gospel of Luke, which speaks of anxiety and worry and distraction. It’s the story of, you know well, of Martha and Mary. These two sisters, and one of the sisters is hurrying around, busy about work in the kitchen, carrying the dishes, and the other sat at the feet of Jesus. And the busy sister asks, Where’s my sister? I need her. And Jesus says to the busy sister, what are you worrying about? What is your worry? You’re distracted, dear woman. You’re worrying why? And it says, but the Lord answered her in Luke chapter 10, Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, right? Why worry? She was worrying because she had her gaze focused on the dinner dishes instead of her Savior. And this happens all the time to us, if we would just admit it, right? All the big things and the little things that draw our focus and our attention and our heart’s concerns away from the very place that it needs to be where it must be, and that’s on Christ. It needs to be there for our health and for our protection and for our safety and for our comfort and for our encouragement throughout the strains and dramas of life. The fact is that distractedness is a mark of little faith. We are to believe that which we profess to be true with our mouths is to permeate all of who we are, weak though we may be. And so why is that? Why is distractedness a mark of little faith? It’s because the things happening in my heart and in my head are being distracted from the fact that regardless of If all of life is falling apart and collapsing in around us, nevertheless, it is still true. It is far more importantly, our Savior, that he is with us than any of those circumstances can be. The Savior is in control. The Savior rules the universe. He preserves, he governs all of his creatures and all of their actions, as we say in our standards. And this Savior, Jesus Christ, works everything together for the good of those who love him, says the Apostle Paul. inspiration of the Holy Spirit. He’s the King of kings. He’s the Lord of lords. He’s the great and powerful Savior, right? We are to believe that. We’re to believe the testimony of Scripture. Is sin and ugliness bearing us down, crushing society, crushing the world? Yes, it is. Is hate and injustice a blight on our society? Yes, it is. Do politicians lie and assert the truth? Of course they do. Does the media distort reality and lie in its reporting? Does it purposely foment hate and anxiety and fear and fan the flames of violence in our culture and outrage? Yes, of course, true. Does it do so knowingly? Yes, it does. Does it do so purposefully? It certainly does. Does social media, consider, provide the opportunity for otherwise sane and civil people to lose their minds and in sinful and gross ways towards each other, act out? Absolutely, it does. And does the lingering sin that clings so closely and pollutes so effectively, does that also distort the way that I act in the world? It does, sadly. Does my flesh delight in drawing lines and taking sides that were created by the world and not by my Lord and His scripture? Sadly and heartbreakingly, yes. We jump so easily right on board with whatever bandwagon or flavor and outrage of the day is, social media, conventional media, whatever it might be, we so easily lock into this or that program or argument and accept uncritically whatever is poured into our minds before our very eyes, all the while abandoning our own worldview, the biblical worldview that we say we believe to hold to. And we’re distracted to forget these basic things that we know and have known most of our lives. Love is to rule our hearts in our actions. Love is to rule our hearts in our actions. Speak the truth in love, Paul said. Our witness to this world isn’t to be snide or condescending or elitist or prideful. We aren’t to tear down others simply because we disagree with them. I know it’s a trait and a gift that so many of us have. And that should be a no-brainer, right? Because the fact is we don’t know everything, but so often we act as though we do, and therefore we condemn everyone who disagrees with us. And these are all distractions from the truth. Take your mind off what is most important. They’re distractions from Christ. They’re distractions from who we are in Christ and the promise that he holds out for those who believe in him. The world is falling apart around us, and it has been for all of history, right? Just like we who were born and we begin to die. It’s been happening since the dawn of creation, since the fall rather. And our inner world so often is falling apart as well. And frankly, when we are distracted, this is what Jesus is telling Martha, that distraction is a sign of little faith. You’re in more fear of the situation than you are, than your faith is in me. And so what do we do? What do we do when we realize that we just swallowed whole the ideas of the world that’s been served up by the world? What do we do when we realize that we are convicted and pricked in our hearts by the spirit of these things and we’ve acted against our identity in Christ as those united to Jesus? when we’ve sinned against our brothers and sisters, when we’ve blown our witness to our neighbors or coworkers in person or online, whatever it might be, what do we do when we’ve now seen and are crushed under the weight of our guilt and sin that the Lord’s convicted us of? What do we do? Well, we flee to Him again. We flee to Christ again. We run to Jesus again. Recall Peter when he sees the Lord after the resurrection. Peter, who denied him three times. He can’t get to Jesus fast enough, and he jumps out of the boat, and he flees to Christ. That’s what we are to do for all of our lives. We confess, and we weep, and we go again and again and again with empty hands, with hands stained with guilt and sin, and we go to him again and again. And he has promised, this one with pierced hands, he has promised that he ever lives to pray for us. on our behalf before the Father, his promise that he will never cast out those who go to him in faith. And he loves, he forgives, and he washes, and he cleanses with his own perfection. And he tells us what? He says, you are mine. I am yours. Be clean. Grow in your faith. Believe again. Trust again in me. Have life in me. Enjoy. and show that love and forgiveness to others that they would know that they too can be refreshed and have a new life and a home forever in glory. You tell them that, you show them that. And you know, brothers and sisters, the wonderful thing is that little faith has the same savior as great faith, right? It says the same savior as great faith. He loves you and he cares for you if you are his. He’d give up everything so that you would have everything. And it became sin for you. Because of all that he gave, holding back nothing, justice has been met, and heaven has been earned. It will fully be finalized in glory. In this world, we will not have ultimate justice. It’s a lie. It’s a lie of the devil. Ultimate justice will not come in this world. Otherwise, why did he come? Rather, what did he say? He said, in this world, you will have not peace. In this world, you will have trouble, he says. But take heart, I have overcome the world, and I give you true peace, not as the world gives, my peace, lasting, true peace, eternal peace. And isn’t that encouraging, brothers and sisters? Isn’t that the thing that we need to hear? It’s also encouraging that we all, none of us wants to admit that our faith is small, that our faith is little. And for sure, for those of us who appear to be most in control and have most have it together, True for us, too. And actually, this can be evident of our lack of faith, right? Indeed, our lack of trust in our Heavenly Father, the pretense and the facade. When we look now at the solution for anxiety, the solution for anxiety from Luke chapter 12 that we began last week, and I’m sure you’ve guessed what it is already, right? The symptom is poor thinking. The source is little faith. And the remedy, the solution to anxiety is our Heavenly Father. It’s the Heavenly Father. And this is what Jesus is telling them. This is what the Master is telling them. When you are inundated and overwhelmed and drowning in all the traumas and dramas of life, all those things that drag you down, that make you anxious, what’s happening is that you have forgotten about your Heavenly Father. And the Apostle Peter talks about this too, the spiritual amnesia, you’ve forgotten who you are. You’ve forgotten your identity in Christ. The Lord is certainly not saying that there are no problems for you. He’s not saying that becoming a follower of Christ means all the problems go away because that’s simply not true, and you all know that it’s not true. Despite what you may have heard from places other than here, the problems in our lives don’t go away when we give our lives to the Lord. That is not a Christian message. Life doesn’t lose all of its problems. Life doesn’t turn into smooth sailing without care. It’s not just health and wealth and saccharine smiles, as they say, when we come to Christ. And if someone’s been telling you that, you need to turn and run the other direction because it’s a lie from hell. Life is warfare. We see again and again, there are battles. Life is full of battles. We’ve chosen a side. We have an enemy, therefore. And Jesus doesn’t promise us a trouble-free life. He promises us peace, his peace, through the troubles of life, right? We saw last week. These trials and tribulations will and do come until our last day, but even those things are not outside the control of our loving Heavenly Father. In fact, they come to lead us to trust our Heavenly Father more, to rely on him more, to trust him more and more and more in the provision that he’s made in Jesus. It’s not the case that the pains and sadness goes away or the hurt and suffering lessens as we become Christians. He’s there through all of it. And you know, my brother was here last week, and he flew out of town earlier last week, and I was thinking, about flight again, incredible thing that it is, flight. And it’s just amazing that we’ve been able to engineer these things, right? But you know, the interesting thing is that our ability to fly doesn’t come from turning off the laws of gravity, right? We can fly not because gravity is paused. And we know that. While gravity remains unchanged, it’s still there. What happens is that the law of aerodynamics comes into play. And there’s a second law that comes to play and it supersedes the law of gravity. And the law of gravity is overcome by the laws of aerodynamics. And there’s something to be learned from this. How does this relate to the anxiety and fears that we have and the very real boldness we can have in light of them? Well, in a similar way that gravity is overcome by aerodynamics, fear is overcome by faith. We see this in Scripture over and over again. Apostle John talks about this in 1 John. Fear is overcome by faith. I’ve mentioned to you before this, a sermon by a 19th century Scottish man. It’s considered one of the greatest sermons ever preached in the English language. It speaks of this overcoming, this dynamic. And a man was named Thomas Chalmers. And he was one of those really impressive peoples that makes you feel like you’re lazy and dumb. He did tons of work in many different fields. He was a professor of theology. He was kind of a social reformer. He was a lecturer and a minister and a mathematician, if you could believe that. And it’s amazing what can be accomplished when I think of these things, these men of old, without the distractions of social media or video games, right? I mean, you can actually think about something. Great things can be achieved. Thomas Chalmers was the man, and the title of the sermon was this. He probably heard of it, if not read it. The Expulsive Power of a New Affection. The Expulsive Power of a New Affection. And it’s a very significant point that he makes there, and I commend it to you all to read at some point. It’s very worth reading. It’s an awesome sermon. And the point that he’s making in that sermon is this. It’s that the sin in our lives is eradicated by setting our love on Jesus. The sin in our lives is eradicated. It’s expelled by setting our love upon Christ. And that new affection expels our love and affection for that sin. See that? And the point he makes in the sermon is that fixating on the problems of the world and of our hearts does not change the world or our hearts. There’s no amount of evaluation of the things that are wrong or bad in this world has the power to change those things. And this is a lesson we need to learn and remember today as well. It’s true for all times. Critique of what’s going on in the world doesn’t change those things that are wrong in the world. What is needed is the expulsive power of a new affection that lifts the plane into the air and makes it to fly. And it’s the same for you and for me, brothers and sisters. And for all time, we can never get rid of the fears and anxieties and worries and all the traumas and dramas of life by trying to get rid of those fears and dramas and worries, et cetera. This is the danger of some periods in practice of a morbid introspectionalism, where you’re just crushed under the weight of your own sin. That will never kill that sin. You focus on Jesus. It’s the only thing that will rid, will expel that affection for those sins. And this is the reason why we’ve all tried to accomplish this, focusing on our sin, focusing on, and we’ve crashed and we’ve burned so badly, and they’ve been dissatisfying, because the thing that we need is the expulsive power of a wonderful, glorious new affection. And even though the troubles and problems may still remain, and they do still remain, the problems and the troubles, the things that cause us anxiety, they remain, but the grace of our Heavenly Father, By that grace, we are not undone by them. We are not crushed by them. And what is that expulsive power of a new affection? From where does it come, this power of a new affection? Well, it certainly doesn’t come from within my own heart, right? My heart is part of the problem, and yours is too. It doesn’t come from out in the world. The world is full of the problem. It’s only going to come, says Christ, from knowing that God is a wonderful Heavenly Father, from knowing that He is your Heavenly Father. Look back at Luke 12, our passage, verse 30 and 32. He says, and your Father knows that you need them. Fear not, little flock. He appeals back to the Heavenly Father. His control and knowledge of all things, and His grace and His love. He knows that you need them, right? These things He’s been speaking of. He says, fear not, little flock. And so, brothers and sisters, it’s when we come to know Him as our Heavenly Father that in the middle of all the overwhelming, unsettling atmosphere of our fear-filled worlds, that our lives can be calmed and steadied in the gospel where they should be. And you, dear Christian, It’s a child of God. You live as someone who is aware of and who knows that your heavenly father takes care of you. He takes care of you better than you can comprehend. And he does, he cares. He cares. He cares so much, in fact, that he sent his only son into the world to take on the form of a man, and he kept covenant perfectly and died for you on that cross. He cares. He loves you. He’s there. So Jesus can say to his disciples, he goes on to tell them in verse 33 to 34, sell your possessions, give to the needy, provide yourselves with money bags that do not grow old, but the treasure that is in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. And that’s it, right? They can receive this word because Jesus has just before told them, fear not little flock, for your father’s good pleasure is to give you the kingdom. They must believe it, must trust him. And it’s been well said that when you know that you have nothing, then you will know that you have everything in Christ. But how can I know that my heavenly father will take care of me? That’s the natural question that comes next. Someone said, well, I can know that he takes care of me because things are going well for me and my family and my work and my church life and I have so much to be thankful for, all that he’s given me and blessed me with. This is how I know that my heavenly father cares for me. And I hope you’re thinking in your minds, that doesn’t sound right. That’s not right. It doesn’t sound correct. And you’re right, it’s not correct. That’s not the correct answer. Because if you believe that that’s the reason why God cares for you, then what happens when everything falls apart, everything goes wrong, you’ll be undone in your life. We can never measure God’s love and care for us based on our apparent condition, our good days and our bad days. We can never rest our trust or our hope on good days because when bad days come, we are crushed. and our relationships when they are strained and when work is struggling, you’ll say, I can’t trust God, he’s left me. I know bad things can and do come upon us. I know that full well and sad things can be true of you and for you, brothers and sisters. Even sitting here in church this morning, we have pain, we have depressions, we have problems, we have struggles against sin, we struggle in the world, we struggle in our hearts, The way to know that God cares for you and loves you is that your heavenly father does care and love you. The way you can know that is this, is that when the world is crumbling all around you, when everything is undone, when everything and everyone, including myself and my own heart, has seemingly gone mad, and you wanna know, how do I know that he really cares for me? What do we point to? What do we grab hold of? The answer, dear Christian, is this, you can know for certain that he cares for you because he did not spare his own son for you, of his love for you, right? That’s how you can know. That’s how you can know. That seems like the most basic and plain thing. That’s how you can know. All the complexities and all the swirling chaos of the world, that’s how you know that he loves you and he cares for you, and he will keep you to the end, right? Romans 8, 28, 32, rather, is one to memorize, right? One to memorize in your heart, if you’ve not. He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for all of us, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? He did not spare his own son. And so I can be certain, and you can be certain that he will work out his purposes in our lives, whatever happens. And here’s the key, dear Christian. It is alone through Christ that we come to know this Heavenly Father. It’s through Christ alone. You want peace in your life? You want peace through the pains and the problems and the predicaments of life? You want relief from the struggles and fears and tears and anxieties in your life? Come to Christ. Come to him. Trust him. Believe him. A new today or a fresh today? Trust in Christ. Because all that we’ve learned that Jesus taught his disciples here in this passage is that his heavenly father, the heavenly father’s son, rather, he’s the one who’s telling you these things today. Will you do so? Will you trust in him? Will you trust him no matter what may come? Sadly, despite this fact that God has given us every reason to trust him, many people are comfortable with their own worry. Many of us are just comfortable in our worry. We hold on to it. It’s like a secret thing that hurts us, but that we don’t want to get rid of. Many people are very comfortable in that worry, and anxiety and worry can become idols for many people. They can become an idol if we’re not careful. And so I plead with you this morning. Do not be content in your worries and anxiety, but trust the Lord completely. Trust him. Give yourselves over to our Heavenly Father. Flee to Christ. It is his promise to be with you. It is his promise to strengthen you and his promise to grow you. Believe it. Trust it. Surrender to this truth because it is true. He’s given you all that you need in himself. so much so that it will grow to penetrate and permeate all that you do as the Holy Spirit works within you from the inside out. And when he does, you’ll begin to experience and recognize his loving working out in your lives more and more and more. And all those worries and those anxieties will grow small in relation to the love that he’s given you and all that he’s promised you in glory. So let us remember this as we move forward for the rest of our lives, for all of our weeks, and let us remember, brothers and sisters, let us show to others that love that was shown to us in Christ as they come and they experience the confrontation with Jesus and his offer on their lives. To the praise of his glory, let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you once more for this, your day. Lord, we thank you that though we are small of faith and that we do stumble through this life, we thank you, Lord, that you are strong, that you are powerful, that you’re in control. Lord, what a joy to know that we have a Father who knows all things and is in control of all things and that we can cling to that we can cling to Jesus, knowing that he prays for us unceasingly, and we can know that we are part of your plan, dear Lord, and those plans are for our good, even for your glory. We ask this all in Christ’s name, amen.