This is a sermon that was preached on Sunday, October 8 2017 at United Presbyterian Church in Sterling, KS.
Listen to sermon audio here.
Read Philippians
4:1-9, Isaiah 41:1-13 here.
--
An exasperated husband asked his wife, “Why are you
always worrying when it doesn't do any good?”
She quickly piped back, “Oh yes it does! Ninety
percent of the things I worry about never end up happenning.”
--
What’s
wrong with worry? We all do it. But worry can be an obstacle to gratitude and
a roadblock to faith. Both Jesus and the
apostle Paul tell us not to worry. So
does Isaiah in the passage we read today.
Twice he says, “Don’t be afraid.”
It’s
not like there aren’t things to worry about.
There are plenty. There always
have been and there always will be. There
were reasons to worry back when these words from Isaiah were written.
Isaiah
was writing the words we read today to comfort Israel. But for the first 39 chapters of this book,
Isaiah has warned the people to repent and change their ways in hopes of averting
the disaster that’s coming, the impending capture by the Babylonian army and
being carried off to exile. He’s given them as many opportunities as possible
to turn back to God. But then in chapter
40, Isaiah switches to comfort, reassuring them that though their exile is now
unavoidable, they can still have hope.
Israel’s
greatest fear in being captured and taken away from Jerusalem was losing God. They
didn’t necessarily want to do what he said to do, or hang out with God, but
they didn’t want to lose him altogether.
What Isaiah tells them over and over is that no matter how bad it gets,
God still promises to be with you. God
is still God, and God has not forgotten you.
Four
times God says to them in chapter 41, “Do not fear, I will be with you.”
I
am holding you. I’m even holding your
hand. I’m still your God and you’re
still my people.
They
were worried about the future. We too
worry about the future. We make plans
and we worry whether our plans will work out the way we want them to. There’s an old joke that says the best way to make God laugh is to make a
plan. One of our Bible writers, James,
also tells us not to get too caught up in making plans. He says,
Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will
go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making
money.” Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will
bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while
and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wishes, we will
live and do this or that.” (James 4:13-15)
We
don’t know the future. Worrying about the future gets us too caught up in
looking ahead, just like too much nostalgia gets us too caught up in looking
back.
Proverbs 19:21 says, “Many are the plans in a person's heart, but it is the LORD's purpose
that prevails.”
God has a plan. In Isaiah’s words God is reminding Israel
that he is working things out in the current time, and in the years and
centuries to come. God was working to
bring them a savior, who we now know is Jesus. He says in verse 4:
“Who has performed
and done this, calling the generations from the beginning?
I, the Lord, am first, and will be with the
last.” --Isaiah 41:4
Jesus says almost
these same words in Revelation. “I am the alpha and omega.” Since the beginning of time, God has been
working. Long after we are gone, God
will still be working, taking care of things through Jesus Christ.
Jesus
knew we humans struggle with worry. He
was fully God and fully human, and in his humanness he struggled with the same
things we do. In the Sermon on the Mount
in Matthew 6, he talks in some depth about worry.
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will
eat or what you will drink,[j] or about your
body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than
clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air; they
neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds
them. Are you not of more value than they?
We can almost imagine the people’s response hearing
this. What do you mean, Jesus? We’re not the same as the birds. They don’t wear clothes. They don’t have to cook their food. They don’t have to have money to pay for
things. Of course the birds don’t have
to worry, but, Lord, we DO! And so Jesus
continues his argument by asking them a rather challenging question:
27 And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of
life?
Well, no, Lord, of course not, but….
28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the
field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet
I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of
these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the
field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not
much more clothe you—you of little faith?
Ouch. Little
faith? Ok, Jesus, I guess you really
mean it, then. So we ask, what do we
need to do?
31 Therefore
do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What
will we wear?’ 32 For it is the Gentiles who strive
for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all
these things. 33 But strive first for the kingdom
of God[l] and his[m]righteousness, and all
these things will be given to you as well. 34 “So do not
worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s
trouble is enough for today.
Jesus knew that we would need to work
on it….to practice trusting instead of worrying, to practice living in God’s
peace. And he knew that his presence would help us with this. Near the end of his life, Jesus explained
this to the disciples, as he was preparing them for what was going to happen to
him over the next three days, his crucifixion and death. He knows they’re afraid, and they’re worried,
so he tells them in his final evening of teaching, in the words we find in John
14-17, how to have peace. He says, “Abide
with me. Remain in me and I will remain
in you.” (John 15)
“I have told you all this so that you
will have peace. In this world you will
have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world.” (John 16)
Jesus’
name that we use most often around Christmas time is Immanuel. It means God with
us. Our greatest assurance, the surest
way to know deep joy and deep peace is to know Jesus and to keep him with us,
to keep turning to him.
That’s
what Paul is reminding us about in his words that we read today from Philippians. Keep turning to Jesus. Keep focusing on the good and the right and
the lovely. Keep bringing your concerns
to God and finding the things to be thankful for.
We
talked last week about how thankfulness takes practice. We grow when we work on it, when we practice
it daily, when we write about it in our little books or journals, when we say
thanks to God daily. Thankfulness isn’t
always easy. Sometimes it’s incredibly
hard, but Paul, in his letter to the Thessalonians, tells us:
Be
thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who are in Christ
Jesus.
(1
Thess 3:18)
That’s
why we need to work on thankfulness…and peace. Peace is what God promises us
through our faith in Jesus. Peace with God, peace that goes beyond our
understanding. The Message version of
Paul’s words makes it clear what happens we keep turning to God for peace:
Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything
coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what
happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life. (Phil 4:7)
Peace
isn’t always easy. We need to practice finding
God’s peace. (Practice peace.)
Instead
sometimes we’re better at practicing worry. It’s easier.
Ralph was head over heels in trouble, and didn’t know
what to do. A friend advised, “Ralph, you’ve got two hands, why don’t you go do
something?”
“I using my two hands,” Ralph replied, “I’m wringing
both of them.”
In
the letter to the Philippians, Paul was writing from prison to a church that he
dearly loved. They were doing well,
doing great ministry, and he didn’t want them to get off track.
Remember to have joy. Remember to reorient on God and know God’s
peace.
If
we don’t take the time to find peace, we can end up living up around the
ceiling. Using a room as the scale, calm
is at the floor. Whenever something
makes us stressed we go up from the floor.
If we don’t get back to calm before the next stress, we go up even more,
and if we keep staying stressed, we end up living around the ceiling, always
stressed, always worried, easily angered or emotional. We go from crisis to crisis, stress to
stress, anger to anger…and stress becomes normal. (Like surface tension – one drop makes the
whole glass spill over.)
What
happens when we face challenges is that our natural response is to react and go
from rational thought to fight-or-flight response. Our brains shift to using our amygdala, the
part of our brains designed to deal with emergencies….which is useful in the
case of an emergency, but not so helpful for dealing with everyday life. The more that we spend time practicing
seeking God’s peace through prayer and meditation, the more we retrain our
responses, and the more we are able to let God guide our thoughts, words, and
actions in the face of trouble.
Paul
says in the Message version:
Summing
it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating
on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not
the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.
Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and
realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you
into his most excellent harmonies.
We
need to follow Paul’s instructions to focus on the good things, and not on our
worries.
A
recently licensed pilot was flying his private plane in a cloudy day. He was
not very experienced in instrument landing. When the control tower was to bring
him in, he began to get panicky. “I can’t see.
What if I hit something?” Then a stern voice came over the radio, “You
just obey instructions, we’ll take care of the obstructions.”
Letting
go of our worries is letting God take care of the obstructions. God can see what we can’t see. God can do so much more that we can do
ourselves.
"Don’t worry about anything;
instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all
he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds
anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you
live in Christ Jesus." --Philippians 4:6-7
One
of the hard things about faith is that it means trusting God even when we are
struggling to know he’s there, and trusting that God’s peace will come, even if
it doesn’t come right away. One of the
devotionals I read frequently encourages readers to thank God for his presence and his peace.
Thank
him for those things, even when we don’t feel it. That’s a step in faith – trusting that God is
there and that God’s peace will come.
The
world is full of things to worry about, but we will miss opportunities to enjoy
and to share God’s peace if we’re focused on our worries. So Paul challenges us to pray about our
worries and say thanks to God and trust God for whatever happens next.
There’s a moment in the Lord of the
Rings series in The Fellowship of the Ring when Frodo is overwhelmed by all
that has happened and he says to Gandalf:
“I wish it need not have happened," said
Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such
times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do
with the time that is given us.”
We too may not always like the way
things are going, but whatever is happening, God has not left us to deal with
it alone.
God has given us his son Jesus so that
we can know his peace, and so that we can make the most of our time here on
earth. We won’t do it perfectly, but
through Jesus, we also know God’s endless mercy and love for us.
There’s
a song been stuck in my head this week that is good for helping to remember to
keep taking our worries to God and finding God’s peace:
Turn your eyes
upon Jesus
Look full in His wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace.
