What is it that you’re afraid of? You’re all aware of that there are many, many different phobias that people have listed that have been written down and catalogued by psychologists even. And I don’t mean the lying language that people use to label someone who is not afraid of a certain thing, but someone is not for or a champion of a certain thing or perfectly accepts that thing. I mean, real phobias, real fears that people have. We all know the common ones that are most prevalent, fear of spiders, fear of snakes, those seem to have some Validity to them, fear of heights, fear of small places, spaces, fear of crowded spaces. These are all real. There’s actually also listed a fear of ducks watching you. That one seems weird. There’s fear of missing out, right? We’ve all heard of. And there’s even one fear of being without your phone. And depending on which survey or list that you read, the top fears are pretty consistent. Fear of flying marks the top of that list. And also marks the top is the fear of public speaking. I’ve mentioned before to you that when I was in seminary, I read an article about scientists who tested the stress levels of people doing various activities, and they would hook up all the wires and sensors and record the data, and it was quite astounding. One of, if not the most stressful activities consistently that they tested was public speaking. It came in actually as quite a bit higher and more stressful than flying an airplane, right, piloting that airplane. But you know, as you observe the culture and the world around you and you engage with that world, as believers, you know, one of the most common and significant phobias out there is Christophobia, the fear of Christ, right? And not far behind that is ecclesiophobia, the fear of the church, the fear of going to church. Each of us struggles with some kinds of fears. The fear of man is a huge problem, for instance, for fallen man in general. And in our text in Luke this morning, it takes us through Christ’s journey to Jerusalem, which culminates or climaxes in his triumphal entry and his passion, right, his death, burial, and resurrection. And in the context of this passage, Jesus has been instructing his disciples about just that learning and growing discipleship and prayer and hostility that they will encounter. And he’s taught them about the need for courage as they do so in their life and the sacrifices they would be called to make as they confess his name before men. And then, not surprisingly, he teaches them about anxiety. The Lord is preparing them, you see. He’s telling them what it means to be a Christian, to live a Christian life, one who belongs to Christ, one who follows Jesus, who’s given their all to Jesus. And sadly, you know, you’re not unfamiliar with this. There are those out there who don’t tell the truth about what it means to be a Christian, what it means to follow Christ. Even in the church, there are those who aren’t quite up front with what that means. The truth is, a Christian life is warfare. It is a battle. It takes courage. There is danger. There is persecution. But it is glorious and it is beautiful as well. But like the rose, right, where there are thorns that rip flesh and draw blood, a Christian life is comprised of both of these things, the beauty and the ridicule and the shunning by society that we undergo. But Jesus draws his disciples’ focus to the anxieties and the phobias to which we are all vulnerable. And for us, when things like what’s going on in our own country, in our own world, and have been forever, right, the unrest, the upheaval that’s going on, the collapse of societies and cultures and countries, the rewriting of history that goes on day by day, the destruction of our economy, add to it all the family, the familial issues that we have, and the relational issues that we have. All of these things and more can drive us very reasonably to worry and fear and anxiety. And what we’re gonna see this morning from this text is that Jesus has something to say about all of this. And we’ll look at the testimony of Scripture regarding these very things, fear, anxiety, worry, and boldness we are to have in them. And so we’ll focus with Jesus. We’ll follow him as he explains these factors related to the living of the Christian life in a world so full of anxiety. We’ll see the symptom of anxiety, the source of anxiety, and then a solution to anxiety, the anxieties that we face. And in the end, brothers and sisters, We know that the gospel is the sweet consolation for the troubled Christian soul. It is indeed the sweet consolation for the troubled Christian soul that resides in each of us.

But first we see the symptom. He addresses the symptom of anxiety in verse 22. And he says this, he said to his disciples, therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life. He tells them not to be anxious. And we have to recognize that the onset that Jesus isn’t just giving a trite or flippant exhortation like we hear, like we read on cards or think so often that he’s giving. My surfer friends growing up would often say in regard to stress, they would say, no worries, bro, no worries, right? A very flippant kind of not really saying anything. But when it counts, it’s just not helpful, right? In the issues and stresses of life, it’s just not helpful to give a trite exhortation. It’s like telling someone to calm down. If someone is riled up, telling them to calm down will not get them to calm down. It does the opposite to them. And so what does Jesus identify as the symptom of anxiety and potential anxiety for his disciples? Where does it reveal itself? Well, if you step back, we notice how how many, many people try to mask anxiety and fear, right? Whether it’s addiction of various kinds, very often it begins with an attempt to escape, right? And there’s an attempt to escape by altering the mind, by numbing the mind, by getting out, going out of your mind. And that makes sense in one sense, because symptoms of fears lie in the mind. Problems aren’t found in this or that situation. It’s not the situation in which we find ourselves. Rather, the problem of anxiety shows up in the problem in our mind. It’s wrong thinking, right, is what we’re seeing here. And Scripture bears this out. When we are overwhelmed with fear, we are showing that our thinking is wrong. There’s something wrong with our thinking. And the remedy we will have to have to rescue us from this mental anxiety, it’s not from the circumstances going on. It’s not being rescued from them. from something else, from something going on in our thinking, in our minds, to restore our clear thinking. So notice what Jesus does here in our text. He says that when his disciples get fearful and worried, they are guilty of poor patterns and poor priorities of the mind. Do not be anxious about your life, he says. 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. So from way back then and even to today, these are two things that cause us great worry. We all know people who think and fret way too much about what they will wear and about the food that they eat. And even subconsciously, we can begin to be obsessed with these things, as we know people who, if not yourself, who are obsessed with these things. And they can and do reorder our minds, and they confuse our priorities. And we can give them far more thought than we ever should be giving them. And Jesus tells us that life is far more than food. It’s far more than clothing. There is much more. far more important than what we eat or what we wear. And obsessing upon worrying about these things steals away our focus from where it should be, our focus on Christ and His glory. Because our life, all of life, is ultimately God’s life. Life is about serving God, living with and for God and for His glory. And let’s not forget the reality of our great enemy. who is content not being worshiped or even thought about so long as people are distracted away from Christ and from living for him and serving him. Whenever we allow or entertain unimportant things or less important things to have center stage in our life, our thinking is off, our spirits are off. Then another symptom of worry is poor pondering, right, like reasoning. It’s very important as believers that we think clearly and that we think Christianly, deliberately. God has given us minds, incredible minds, and we must use them for his glory. We’re not to sacrifice the life that we live in our minds as we enter the church door. We’re to use them for his glory. We must learn to ponder and to reason correctly and rightly, and to think God’s thoughts after him. Notice what Jesus does next to teach us. He says this in verse 24, consider the ravens. They neither sow nor reap. They have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. How much more value are you than the birds? In verse 27, consider the lilies, how they grow. Yet I tell you, even Solomon in all of his glory was not arrayed like one of these. We must develop and tune our reading, our thinking to the Lord. And Jesus here is not merely telling us that fear and anxiety is cured by getting out, out into the park and experiencing creation. It’s not saying that anxiety and fear are cured by having a walk in the forest, right, where we observe creation and take deep breaths. We look at the birds and we listen, looking at the flowers, but that’s not what Christ is encouraging. It’s not what his instruction is for us. He’s telling us to learn about our Heavenly Father from these things. He’s telling us to learn from the bird. It has no storehouse. It has no crop. It doesn’t have anything. Yet our Heavenly Father cares for the birds, takes care of them. He says, oh, how much vastly more valuable and important are you, am I, are we to him? And the flowers, we’re not just encouraged here to go smell the sweet fragrance of a flower and look upon its beauty, but we must ponder, we must think and ask, what do the flowers teach me about God? What am I to learn from his creation? Worry and anxiety are symptomatic of wrong thinking and poor theology. Because we’re thinking correctly about God and about what Jesus is saying, when we clearly see that whatever situation I’m in, it’s in the hands of my loving Father, my heavenly Father. We can also have poor presuppositions, right? Where he says in verse 25, in which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his lifespan? It does no good to be anxious about that which you have no control. Don’t presume it will do a thing because it will not. And in fact, the only thing being gained or the only thing that being anxious adds to our life is what? It’s more anxiety. So those are some of the symptoms that he talks about. There’s the symptom.

And then he moves on to the source of our anxiety, right? The source of our anxiety. And because he is Jesus, he touches the issue, as the Latin would say, with a needle. He touched the thing with a needle. He puts his finger on the problem. In verse 28, he said, what is the problem? Verse 28, but if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you? Oh, you of little faith. And there’s the source, right? Oh, you of little faith. The problem is little faith. That is the real source of our anxieties and our stresses and our fears. It’s a lack of faith, not false faith, but little faith. You can have real faith, but it’d be small. It’d be a little faith. And Jesus is saying here that when we are anxious and worry and we fear about the basic things in life, it’s a sign of the smallness of our faith. And he uses this phrase elsewhere in the gospels. And you know, that’s another lesson that we should learn from reading God’s word is to pay attention when we read similar things and same things, and they should draw our minds to those common things. So we learn, so we see what we’re to learn from them. And perhaps Jesus was signaling to his disciples when he says this about those other lessons he gave when he uses the same phrase, right? Remember, even as we saw in Mark very recently on the Sea of Galilee, right there in the boat, And they’re yelling at Christ during the storm and the waves. They’re scared literally for their lives. And they’re saying, don’t you care about us? We’re about to die. Don’t you even care? And actually the fact that he was on the boat in the first place proved that he cared. And before he rebuked the wind and the waves, what did he say? He addresses them and he says, what are you afraid of? Oh, you of little faith. And what about you, brothers and sisters? What about us? What is your response to crisis? How do you respond to calamity and to plague and to civil unrest and to political madness? I pray that you, in all these circumstances, that you will be driven, that you would flee to Christ, the God-man. For there alone is peace in Christ, true and lasting peace. alone is found in Christ. So if that was their little faith, right? They’re in this great storm. What does that mean? What is the little faith? They’re in this great storm, yes, but where were their eyes and their minds focused, right? They’re in the great storm, but they are also with an even greater Savior. They were fixed on the great powerful storm and away from the greater and far more powerful Savior. And they say, save us, Lord, we’re perishing. Save us, don’t you even care? And how much more impactful and personal in our lives, right? Not the consideration of the madness of the world alone, but the cry and plea of our own hearts about our own selves. Lord, I am dying and don’t you care about me? In this sentiment makes perfect sense if we think about it, right? We think, Lord, in this world, false is true, true is false. False reasoning doesn’t matter at all. Data doesn’t matter at all. History, reality doesn’t matter. It’s been abandoned. Don’t you even care about these things? Don’t you even care about truth anymore in your world? But while that’s true, how much more personally does it hit home when we think, Lord, I’m hurting, I’m suffering. I’m broken and breaking, my life is a wreck. My heart is broken and breaking. My sin is crushing me. Don’t you care? Where are you in these things? Help me take it away, my hurt, my guilt, my shame. But dear Christian, we have to remember the truth that in all of it, he is there. He is there. Those circumstances, though as real and valid as they are, they must never distract us from that truth that our great problems, all of them are not greater than our great Christ.

Your money, your things, they aren’t the solution, nor is your working, nor is your goodness. Those can never provide the true solution for worry and stress and anxiety. and your shame and guilt and pain. Again, all of this, in all of our crying out, take it away, Lord, my guilt, my pain. Those circumstances are real, but he is there with you in the boat, right? He died for you, he rose for you, and he ever lives to plead your case before the Father. And what a joyful reality that is. What a joyful reality, dear Christian. And in your pain and in your hurt and in your shame and in your guilt and in your depression and anxiety and worry, he is there. He’s there. That’s his promise to you. And he is there and he bids you to look away from those circumstances and away from it all and make central your Savior. We’re to cast off all of those things that compete for affection with our Savior. and even those things that would compete with our focus of our Savior. The promise is not freedom from those troubles. Christian life is a battle, right? There’s a war going on. It’s a struggle. from the troubles of life. It is his presence in those troubles. That’s the promise. It’s his presence in and through those troubles. And his promise is, through the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit, even in it all, you can rejoice, right? Think of that most in-our-flesh, impossible thing that none of us can do, that the Apostle Paul tells us to do in our sufferings. He tells us to rejoice in your sufferings. Rejoice in your sufferings. That is the most important thing. Again, from our flesh, a ridiculous thing we could ever think of. Rejoice in our sufferings? But think of all that the Apostle Paul went through. All the things that he went through that he catalogs for us, and he says rejoice in sufferings. It’s only to be had through the work of the Holy Spirit. knowing just what those sufferings mean, just what they point to, just what he’s been rescued from, from all these things, and he can rejoice. Not just grit his teeth and bear through it, but to rejoice in the sufferings, knowing that his Savior and his grace is sufficient for him and God’s power is made clear through his weakness. And even when our faith is little, And it is often little, if we’re honest, brothers and sisters. He does not cast us away, right? There’s no threshold where he says, ah, your faith is too small, and I’m done. Rather, our King and our Lord brings us again and again to those things which make strong our faith, and that is His word and sacrament, all bathed in prayer. Word, sacrament, and prayer. These are the things that we’re given to make strong our small faith.

So, dear friends, make certain this day that you don’t allow another hour to pass without knowing this Jesus, the Christ of Scripture, the only peace in life, in all the worries of life, both macro and micro, is in Christ. Flee to Him. Flee to Him if you’ve not fled to Him. Taste and see and rejoice and be refreshed and renewed by the waters of salvation in Him for you. You will struggle and strive. You will suffer and battle in this life. But with him, in it all, there is peace, true peace, not as the world gives, but true peace. And for those of you who do know this Jesus, praise him, delight in him, bask in his love. Let us flee to him in our worry, in our anxiety, in our joys, in our rejoicing, but also in our suffering. Let us flee to him in all of our guilt and shame, because it’s the only place we have to go with him. Let us flee to him even through those small of faith. And this Jesus, he provides peace from our worry, freedom and forgiveness for our guilt and our shame. And he provides faith and strength to our weakness for all That is His, is ours, we are told then, because we are united to Him by faith. What He merited is yours, dear Christian, if you belong to Him. So let us go forth in peace and in strength of the Lord, basking in his love, overflowing with that peace and mercy and love, spilling over to the lives of all those whom we encounter this week and ongoingly and forever. Let us live our lives for him, this one who died for us and was risen again. Oh, what a wonderful Savior that we have indeed.

Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we are indeed grateful for all that you’ve given us. You’re grateful that you are the God of all mercy, and that mercy does triumph over judgment. Lord, we praise you for this truth. Mercy triumphs over judgment. Lord God, if you were like us, we would all be condemned. Yet you are a God who is gracious and merciful and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. You are a God who delights to save sinners A God who, yes, is just and willing and will bring judgment, but not before pleading and waiting and offering himself in word and sacrament, generation after generation. God, we pray that your mercy displayed to us, even today, would once again bring us back in repentance and faith, where we pray and encourage and enlarge our hearts towards you, increase our faith, our little faith, Father, help us to be focused on that very thing that we should be focused on, that should permeate and flow through and out of all of our lives, and that is our Savior, this one through whom we have life and joy and peace, not only in this life, but even into the next and forever. Lord, we pray for Providence Church. We pray that you would continue to bless us and grow us, Lord, and as we do so, we pray that you provide for us Provide for us even facility that would hold all of us, Lord. We thank you for this blessing. We pray you would continue to grant to us a common peace and love, Lord, and care that we have one for another. Pray that we would indeed be those in this dead and dying world that have peace, that are different from this world, that are peculiar. And we pray that even those things you would use to that world that they would ask, and we could tell them just the reason for that, Lord, that we would invite them to come and hear, have a confrontation with Christ, Lord, and we pray that if it’s your mercy, in your will, that you would grant life as they do, Lord, bless us in all that we do, be with those in a special way that are suffering mightily, Lord, we know that that you’re aware of intimately, of all of the struggles that we have, whether it’s relational, financial, physical, or do you know when we pray that we would remember that you are indeed the God of the resurrection of the dead and that we will one day be freed from these things and that we will indeed have lasting peace where sin will be no more and we’ll have no more guilt no more tears, no more crying, no more pain. So Lord, help us through this life to remember these things, even as we look to the next, Lord, and we pray that we would indeed be tools for your glory in all that we do. We ask all this in Christ’s name, amen.