(Open by playing first portion of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” by Bobby McFerrin )

Name that tune?

Here is a little song I wrote
You might want to sing it note for note
Don't worry be happy
In every life we have some trouble
When you worry you make it double
Don't worry, be happy......

“Don’t Worry, Be Happy” was Bobby McFerrin’s 1-hit wonder.  It was the #1 pop hit in 1988, and it won the Grammy for Best Song of the Year.  Listen to some more of the lyrics and tell me, doesn’t this have to be one of the most annoying, insensitive songs ever written?

Ain't got no place to lay your head
Somebody came and took your bed
Don't worry, be happy
The land lord say your rent is late
He may have to litigate
Don't worry, be happy

I mean, really, come on!  Isn’t that one of the most irritating songs in the world?

When he wrote this song, you’ve gotta wonder, on what planet was he living?

Think about it for a second: here is your life: you are struggling to pay the bills, you lose your job, you car breaks down, your health fails, a loved one dies….

And Bobby McFerrin sympathetically counsels: “Don’t worry, be happy!  Hey, just a bit of trouble!  Don’t worry, that’s life.   Be happy!”

And who is this guy, anyway, to tell me not to worry but to be happy?

Here’s a funny story: Bobby McFerrin used to live in Marin County, and shortly after this song became popular, his car broke down on Highway One near the Golden Gate Bridge. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that motorists stopped to help, and, once they saw who was behind the wheel of the stalled car, shouted “Don’t worry, be happy,”and drove off.

Well, two thousand years before Bobby McFerrin, there was a man named Jesus… he didn’t compose and sing “don’t worry, be happy”, but he did say some pretty strong things about not worrying.

Please open your Bibles with me to Matthew 6:25-34:

Jesus says:  “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear.  Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?  Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they?  Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?  And why do you worry about clothes?  See how the lilies of the field grow.  They do not labor or spin.  Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.  If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?  So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’  For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.  But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.  Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Before we dive into this passage, we need to be careful about our approach.  One option is for us to come to this passage like we would to Bobby McFerrin’s wonderful song.  If we did this, we would come away seeing Jesus as an unsympathetic and annoying wise-cracker who looks down on us in our misery and says with a snicker, “Don’t worry, just be happy!”

The other option - the one we must choose - is to come to this passage with the knowledge that this is Jesus speaking, the One and Only King of Kings… who left his heavenly home to be born among animals, live in 1^st century Palestine as a commoner, and eventually succumb to beatings and whipping culminating in death on a cross.  We must also remember that this Jesus is the same one who said that those who follow him would likely have a similar lot in life, suffering persecution and even death.

In light of who Jesus is - and in light of the reality of suffering that we all experience in this life - what in the world are we to make of this command: “Don’t worry!”

Of all people, Jesus, the all-knowing God - who is the only one who sees this world for the mess that it really is - you’d think that HE of all people would know that there is PLENTY to worry about.  Hell is real.  People are going there.  People are sinful - hating each other, killing each other - this is an evil world!  Jesus, of all people, should know this, right?  How in the world, then, can he say, “Don’t worry”?  When we read the Bible, we see that the Bible gives us plenty of things to worry about!

So - What does Jesus mean?  What is Jesus saying in Matthew 6:25-34?

Well I don’t know.  Don’t worry about it.

Be happy.

Let’s close in prayer.

Just kidding.

These are some serious questions, and it would be wise of us to think through this passage and ask ourselves:

What is Jesus saying?  And how can we apply it to our lives?

One of the first things that we need to remember is that God loves us.  Jesus came to give us LIFE.  Certainly his commands are meant for our good.  Certainly his teaching is meant to teach us how to truly LIVE.

Jesus is not saying, “Life stinks, get over it and be happy.”

Jesus IS saying: “I came to bring my Kingdom into your hearts… I came to tell you how to live the life that God has planned for you – I came to teach you how to live in the Kingdom of God.”

What Jesus is teaching us in Matthew 6:25-34 is that in the midst of this sorry world that we live in - beset by sin both from without and from within – in the midst of this ‘reality’ that we live in, we can have LIFE as God intends for us to have.  We can have it by doing one thing and one thing alone: trusting in Him.

This passage is not about how sinful we are because we worry.  Jesus is not trying to guilt trip us into not worrying.

Jesus is saying, “I love you.  I want you to really live.  Listen, I will tell you words of LIFE.  I want you to have more life!”

So do you trust his words?  Do you want this LIFE that our loving Lord offers us?  Do you want to experience this Kingdom-living?

This is the key:  We can experience the Life God has for us by trusting Him to care for us.  If we want more LIFE, we must trust him and worry less.

If there is one thing that God is saying to us from this passage, it is this: “Trust me.”  Jesus knows your pain.  He knows your struggles.  He knows everything about your life, and he pleads, “Come to me, and I will give you LIFE.  Trust me.”

That’s it.  That’s the application from this passage!  Nothing more.  Trust Jesus.

But because we sometimes don’t understand what that really means, and how we can do it... Jesus gets more specific.  As we look at this passage in more detail, we’ll see clearly four things that we can DO to trust God.

We can experience the Life God has for us by trusting Him to care for us.

So what can we do?

The first thing you can do is this:

Make up your mind (decide what LIFE is all about)

Let’s look at verse 25:  Jesus says:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?”

The first thing you’ll notice, because we go to Creekside, is the word “therefore.”  Some of you are hearing that word and wisely asking, “Wherefore the Therefore.”  Or you may be wondering, “What is the Therefore there for?”  Two weeks ago we talked about the passage preceding this.  That passage emphasized that whatever we seek out, chase after, that thing is our Master - the boss of our lives.  If we’re chasing after riches, that greed will control us.  If we’re chasing after God, he’ll rule us.  In the last passage, we saw we can find our pleasure only in God and not in money, and we saw that we can maximize our joy from money by investing it in the Kingdom of God.  Therefore, since we are not seeking money and the goods of this world, but seeking God, Therefore… don’t worry about having the goods of this world.

Listen again to what Jesus says:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?”

Did you notice the question that is not really a question?  Jesus says, “Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?”

Life is about more than food and clothing, right?

Jesus here tells us not to worry about our lives… about what we’ll eat or drink or wear.  Why?  Because that’s NOT what life is all about!

Are you convinced?  If you have plenty of clothes and plenty of food, are you living the life that God created for you to live?  Are we complete as human beings - fulfilled and enjoying all the pleasures we were created for - if we have food and clothing?

Of course not!  We have this hunger for God!  Deep inside of us we yearn for the love of God.  We yearn for a relationship with our Almighty Creator.  If we eat, drink and then die… what a WASTE of a life!

The Bible throughout teaches that LIFE is all about God.  Jesus is the LIFE.  If we know HIM, we have LIFE.  If we don’t know HIM, we don’t have LIFE.

Are you convinced?

Is your life all about God?

This is the first step to trusting God.  If we want to trust God, we must trust Him when he says: “You will find satisfaction only in Me.”

Most of us in this room would agree, right?  Fulfillment isn’t found in surviving for a long time, or in accumulating stuff, being famous, or any other worldly thing we might chase after.  Most of us here today would say that fulfillment is found in glorifying God and living out His purpose for us.

At the heart of worry is the assumption that we need to sustain ourselves in order to fulfill whatever purpose we have here on earth.  But that’s God’s job.  Part of the problem is that we assume life is just one long episode of Survivor, and we’re here just for the sake of existing, and we must do whatever we can to stay on for another week.  Instead, we should recognize that life is all about God and trust Him to do with us what is best for His glory.

Consider Paul!  He was put in prison for telling others about Jesus.  And from prison, instead of complaining, saying, “I tell people about Jesus, and this is what I get from God!” no, instead of saying that, Paul says “Now I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel.” (Philippians 1:12).

Do you see where his heart is at?  All Paul really cares about is the Glory of God!  Paul doesn’t even care if he dies!  He says, “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

Life is not about food and clothing.  Life is not about securing our comforts and having all our ducks in a row. Life is not about how many toys we have or how many vacations we can go on.  Life is not about glorifying ourselves.

Life is about God.  Life is all about Jesus.  You exist for his purposes, and he’ll do what it takes to keep you alive until that purpose is fulfilled.  Our survival is His business.  He has it covered.

And in the event that God drops the ball, there’s this:  (slide)

The Quantum Sleeper.  The Safest Rest You’ve Ever Had.  Protection from bio-chemical terrorist attack, natural disasters, kidnappers, stalkers, bullets, samurai swords, you name it.  My favorite feature is the one-way mirror, that black part at the head of the bed, so you can cower inside and watch your attacker get all flustered trying to get at you, and he only sees his sorry reflection.  The Safest Rest You’ve Ever Had….  Oxygen not included….  Does not protect against bed bugs.

Don’t waste your time dreaming up schemes to sustain your life.  If we want to experience the life that God has for us, we need to trust Jesus; we need to make up our minds that LIFE, true LIFE is all about God, his purposes.  If our continued existence is in the best interest of the Kingdom of God, the big picture, he’ll find a way to keep us alive.

The second thing we can do to experience the Kingdom life that God has for us is this:

Observe God’s Sovereign Care

Consider verses 26-30:  “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they?  Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?  And why do you worry about clothes?  See how the lilies of the field grow.  They do not labor or spin.  Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.  If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O  you of little faith?”

If we want MORE life.. if we want to be living the LIFE that God wants for us, we need to observe His sovereign care.

Can you picture Jesus as he is teaching these things to his disciples?  Can you picture Jesus looking up in the air and saying to his disciples, “Look at the birds of the air….”

He says the same thing to us today… “Look around you.  Look at the world around you and observe.  Look at how I take care of my creation!  Look how feed the birds!  Look at the fields… see the beautiful flowers?  Aren’t they lovely?  I take care of them!  I clothe them!  And you matter so much more to me than they do!  I made you in my own image!  Don’t you know I care for you more than I do for these flowers?  They are here today and then gone tomorrow… but you are my children forever!  Don’t you see?  I love you!  I care about you!  I will take care of you!  Trust me!”

Observe God’s sovereign care.  We Americans are arguably the most well-fed and best-dressed humans in history, and yet we still spend our time chasing after these things.  Jesus reminds us to look around and compare His provision to what we frantically scrape together ourselves.  I’ll give some visuals:

God’s fashion: (slide)

Human attempt: (slide)

God’s design: (slide)

Man’s attempt: (slide)

God’s provision: (slide)

Man’s attempt: (slide)

Whatever you think you can provide for yourself by worrying, God can come up with something more beautiful, and more dignified.

Some of the best proof of God’s providence is that we are sitting here, alive.  ‘Is not life more important than food?’ It’s much more complicated to sustain a human life than to throw together a meal.  Those of you who hosted Thanksgiving may disagree with that, but I think that’s what Jesus is getting at.  When we worry about our basic needs - what will I eat? What will I wear? - the core of our anxiety is the fear that we’ll be neglected and die.  We want to do whatever it takes to preserve our fleeting lives, and so we become preoccupied with finding things to sustain us.  So much so, we overlook the fact that God has been keeping us alive since we were born.  God will sustain us for as long as we need to be sustained.

Corrie ten Boom, a Dutch Christian Holocaust survivor who helped many Jews escape the Nazis during World War II, wrote, “Worry is a cycle of inefficient thoughts whirling around a center of fear.”

Worry will not make us better fed or better dressed.  The matter is much better kept in God’s hands.  Proof is all around you, in nature, and most likely, in your own history.

How can we have MORE life?  We can have more life by observing God’s sovereign care… and trusting Him to care for us.

So the first thing we can do is to Make up our minds that life is all about Jesus.

The second thing that we can do to is to Observe God’s Sovereign Care.

And as we consider verses 31-32, we’ll see that the third thing we can do is:

Run away from worldliness

Jesus says:  “So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’   For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.”

There were two types of people in Jesus’ day: Jews and Gentiles:  God’s people and “not” God’s people.  The same is true today; there are two types of people today, those who trust God, and those who don’t.  Believers and unbelievers.

Those who don’t trust God worry to themselves and ask, “What am I going to eat?  What am I going to drink?  What am I going to wear?”  Jesus says that those who do not belong to God “run after these things” of the world.  The Greek word here that is translated as “run after” means “to be seriously interested in or have a strong desire for.”

So there are two types of people in the world today: there are those who have a strong desire for the things of this world, and there are those who trust God.

Which ones shall we be?

Certainly we want to be people who run away from worldliness.  We want to be people who have a strong desire for God and not for the things of this world.  There are certainly things of this world that we need.  We need food to eat and clothes to wear; without these things we will die!  God created us with these needs.  It is obviously not wrong to satisfy these needs, but it is wrong to fret and scramble after these things instead of trusting that God knows we need them.

Jesus said that we are “not of this world.”  We’re foreigners here.  We aren’t supposed to fit in or keep up with the Joneses, because the Joneses are an entirely different species (apologies to Everett and Debbie).  If we don’t dress the same as everyone else, that’s okay, because we are different from the people who belong to this world.  We’re not slaves to Gucci or any other fashion trend.  We are different.  The things of this world are cheap and fleeting compared to the things of Heaven.

Janelle had a friend in high school who was a French exchange student.  Do you think a Parisian teenager fretted about fitting in with American fashion trends?  No, they’re way ahead of our fashion scene.  And how much do they care if they miss the window of opportunity to eat McRibs  - at McDonald’s for a limited time!  They aren’t worried about it.  They know “where they came from and where they’re going,” as Jesus said, and they don’t fret about the opportunities they miss here.

If we want to experience the Kingdom life that God has for us, we will:

1)  Make up our minds that life is all about God

2)  Observe God’s sovereign care

3)  Run away from worldliness

And finally, the fourth thing we will do is…

Enter into Kingdom-mindedness

Let’s read the last two verses of our passage.  In verses 33 and 34, Jesus says:  “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.  Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

These two verses encapsulate the message of this passage.  Entering into Kingdom-mindedness is the goal of this entire passage.  The reason we should not worry is that it is antithetical to Kingdom living.

Worry has self as focus, Kingdom-living has God as the focus.

Jesus says, Seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness….

Seeking God’s Kingdom means actively working to increase the reign of God in our own lives and in the world.

Seeking God’s Kingdom first means finding our greatest pleasure in the glory of God.  Are you pleased when Jesus is shown to be the all-satisfying God that he is?

One who is seeking first the Kingdom of God is one who is not so interested in having the latest toys.  He is more interested showing the world that Jesus is who he says he is.

Most of us are familiar with Rich Mullins: (slide)

He was a Christian musician; he wrote “Awesome God,” and many other popular worship songs.  He died in a car accident in 1997, when he was 42.

His life serves as an example to me of Kingdom-focused living.  He was a 12-time Dove Award winner, sold millions of records, and could have been living it up on his own private island if he wanted.  Instead, he was more concerned with advancing God’s Kingdom.  He established a ministry teaching music to kids on Indian Reservations in New Mexico and Arizona.  Though his albums and concerts generated millions of dollars, he lived off about $25,000 a year, in a trailer park on an Indian reservation, and invested everything else into ministry.  His church managed the distribution of his money, and he requested they not tell him how much he was making.  He was known for dressing shabbily and bumming lunch off his friends.  He was also known for leading a peaceful life.  He didn’t have to worry that someone would break into his mansion and steal his big screen TV.  He didn’t have to stress over someone scratching his perfect Ferrari.  Everything he had was God’s, and it was God’s responsibility to take care of it.  That included all he had – his stuff, his reputation, even his life.  In his song “Elijah,” he wrote:

Well, if they dressed me like a pauper
Or if they dined me like a prince
If they lay me with my fathers
Or if my ashes scatter on the wind
I don't care
But when I leave I want to go out like Elijah
With a whirlwind to fuel my chariot of fire
And when I look back on the stars
Well, It'll be like a candlelight in Central Park
And it won't break my heart to say goodbye

Can you say that?  Would it break your heart if you had to die and go home to God?  On a lesser note, would you get all worked up if you had to eat or dress like a pauper?  How much does it matter in the grand scheme of things?  God will provide what’s appropriate to complete the big picture.  You don’t have to break your back trying to pull things together; you’re his child, and he has it covered.

Living for God’s Kingdom frees us from the bondage of worry.  He came that we may have life, and have life abundantly.

We get more life and less worry if we:

Make up our minds and decide what life is all about,

Observe God’s sovereign care,

Run away from worldliness, and

Enter into Kingdom-mindedness.

Jesus, who was homeless, had no place to lay his head and knew the torture laid out for him - this Jesus walked through life without worrying. But he had an advantage:  He understood how short human lives are here, he understood how long eternity is, and he understood how perfectly the story would unfold.

Let us take him at his word, and cast our anxieties upon him, for he cares for us.

Let’s pray.