Bethlehem Lutheran & Bethel Lutheran Church, Lebanon & Sweet Home, OR
Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity + September 9, 2018
Text: Matthew 6:24-34
These are some of the most reassuring words in Scripture, especially in times of economic distress and danger to life. And most of us have experienced that kind of distress in one way or another. You have a young family and the breadwinner loses his or her job. You’re a new college student ready to take on the world and you find out how much it costs to live on your own. You’re retired and living on a fixed income, but what’s going out seems to keep growing. But we also experience danger to our lives every day, whether it’s hurdling down the road in a metal box at 70 mph or going about our daily life while a deadly disease eats away on the inside. Just regular life is enough to drive a person insane.
Our Lord pulls us out of our human tizzy and invites us to look around at the creation to the birds of the air and the lilies of the field. They are content day to day, even though they don’t work and may be destroyed at a moment’s notice.
“27 These all look to you,
to give them their food in due season.
28 When you give it to them, they gather it up;
when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
29 When you hide your face, they are dismayed;
when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.” (Psalm 104:27-29)
If we look at the rest of creation, we can see that it’s not a problem with God providing and ordering things; it’s a problem with us believing that. It’s we of little faith who are anxious and fret about the future, are displeased with the present, and work our fingers to the bone in an effort to shield ourselves from destitution.
It’s not that Jesus shuns “sowing, reaping, and storing away in barns.” That is something which is given for people to do. From the beginning of creation, God put man and woman in the garden to work the land. So, by all means, if you have the ability, you should work and earn a living. That part is good and God-pleasing, especially when it’s done to provide for family and others. Incidentally, the New Testament has some pretty strong language for those can work and refuse to: “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat” and “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”[1]
While work is a good thing, we can do without the anxiety. The anxiety springs from our feeble faith, which doesn’t fully trust God and doesn’t fully commend our lives into His fatherly care. At times, we all have fears that God has either lost control of our lives or doesn’t know what He’s doing. We’ve seen it happen that a person does his part and suffers instead of getting fruit from his labor. So, faith is trumped by our reason and the hard evidence of our experiences.
Our Lord sums His lesson up by saying, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you.” As much and as often as we have the ability to put our faith in Him, that is the number one priority. With a right faith in God—who gives daily bread even without our prayer and “causes His sun to rise alike on the righteous and the wickedp—we will experience what the birds and grass already know because they are not so blinded by sin.
The struggle for dominance is not so cut and dry that we can easily identify it all the time. Little faith can wear some very well-meaning, good-sounding costumes:
There’s the pragmatist who argues that God helps those who help themselves. True as that may be for our responsibilities in the world, that’s not our Father’s primary goal. He’s not our Heavenly Schoolmaster, but the God who created and still preserves His children, without any merit or worthiness in us. Thus, His aim is that we believe in Him as that that kind of God, and not that we can prove ourselves to be harder workers than others.
There’s the pessimist, who looks at the figures and what he sees as the facts, and draws the conclusion that this is never going to work. The pessimist makes one big assumption and also lacks something big. With sophomoric zeal, they assume that their perspective is the full picture and that they know all the future holds. Do those traits sound familiar? They should because they should belong to God. Because the pessimist is shouldering the weight of the world, they don’t go to God in prayer with trust. The outward act of prayer may be there, but without truly entrusting one’s life to God, you might as well have not prayed.
Finally (this may be the result of the previous two), there’s the idolater who outright believes that God has forgotten His job. Sure, He promises to provide, protect, and everything, but I can’t wait for him. I better take matters into my own hands and start looking for more practical help. Is it money you need? It doesn’t matter how you get it, as long as your bank account keeps a high balance. Is it the future you want a clue into? Read the horoscopes. Is it length of life you’re after? Put your faith in genetic engineering and stem cells harvested from aborted fetuses. Since God doesn’t seem to be coming through, you’ve got options. All of these echo with the hiss of the Ancient Serpent.
These outlooks are all ultimately dead-ends, because they take our little faith, and make it even smaller.
If we had perfect faith, we would be as content as the bird who flying through the air one minute and gets sucked into the jet engine the next. We would delight in the fleeting beauty of our youth and the fruit of our labors, and no less content when it was taken away. If we had perfect faith, we would be Jesus. But we’re not, and for now we have to leave that perfect trust to the birds and the flowers. Meanwhile, God is gracious to us and bears with us with our anxious and troubled hearts. Joined to Christ, the Perfect Man, He forgives what is lacking in our little faith.
“All these things will be added to you.” Here’s another place where we have room for improvement. “These things” is equivalent to the “daily bread” of the Lord’s Prayer. It’s everything that we need to support this body and life. (Check your Small Catechism on the fourth petition of the Lord’s Prayer for the full list.) What God is promising and what we expect is not always in synch. Your heavenly Father promises to provide you’re your needs—“The eyes of all look to you and you give them their food in due season.” (Psalm 145:15). He promises to protect you from danger—“He will command His angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.” (Ps. 91:11-12) He heals you both in soul and body—“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases…who satisfies you with good” (Psalm 103:2-5)
Is it really that God fails to keep HIs promises? I think not. Could it be, as it was with Israel in the wilderness, that He lets us hunger for a while so that we might learn “that man does not live by bread alone.”[2] Often times when He lets us hunger and long for a while, it’s to expose and put to death our trust in that 2nd master, Mammon. His desire for you is that you would have Him alone as your Lord and Master, because He does give you all that you need both for this life and a blessed eternity.
By grace, He has given us His Kingdom and clothed us in His righteousness to cover up all our doublemindedness. Through the Holy Spirit’s work in our hearts, our little faith grows and dominates how we regard “these things.” You have been called out of the futile ways of the nations, groping in the dark for what God freely gives! Return to the Lord your God, for He is our help and your only salvation—not just in this life but for all eternity. Let Him teach you anew every day that “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every Word that comes from the mouth of God.”
Brothers and sisters, live by these Words of your God:
31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
Thanks and praise to God through Jesus our Savior! Amen.
[1] 2 Thessalonians 3:10; 1 Timothy 5:8
[2] See Deuteronomy 8:3-5