Read Textual Sermon from Tony Evans
The Antidote to Worry: A Heavenly Perspective
You have a heavenly Father with no limitations—Owner of creation—and you question whether He’s going to meet your need. The way Matthew puts it, seek first the Kingdom. Prioritize the eternal. Prioritize the spiritual. Jeremiah 17:8 says, “When you do, He provides even in a drought.”
Jesus tells a story to the crowd—about a man who wanted Jesus to redistribute the wealth so that this man could get an inheritance from his brother. Jesus then tells him the parable in verses 13–21 of Luke about a rich man who had gathered all of his profits together in order to retire early and enjoy the good life from his business success, only to hear the words, “You fool; tonight your soul is required of you; and then whose shall those things be, which you have provided?” And now who will own what you have accumulated?
Then Jesus broadens the application and says, “So is everybody.” This doesn’t just apply to the person He was talking to or the rich man He was talking about. It applies to everybody who is—so is the man or the woman who pursues treasures in this life and is poor toward God; has no wealth in heaven while seeking to accumulate wealth in this life, or the things that wealth can provide.
Now, beginning in verse 22, Jesus knows that the disciples are listening to what He’s told the crowd. And He knows what they are thinking. He knows they’re thinking, “Now, wait a minute. Let’s get practical. Jesus, I have to live in the nasty here and now, and you’re telling me to focus on the sweet by-and-by. I’ve got to go to work. I’ve got to feed my family. I’ve got to take care of my business. Come on, Jesus, let’s get practical. Life is real and life is hard, and you’re coming up with this heavenly perspective stuff—‘be rich toward God’—when I’ve got to live with my two feet on the ground where real people live and real problems exist. So sometimes, Jesus, this God stuff, heaven stuff, eternal focus stuff seems a bit pie-in-the-sky and not really related to my daily existence.”
He knew they were thinking that. He knew you were thinking that. So He told me, “Preach this.”
It says, “He said in verse 22 to His disciples”—so now Jesus has turned from the crowd to His followers. He’s now not talking to the masses anymore. He’s told them the story; He wants to apply it to His followers. So what He’s about to say in verses 22–34, He wants His people to hear—those who claim Him, those who claim to follow Him.
And His message is very simple, and so is mine. He repeats His message over and over and over again. And this message is: if you decide to live your earthly life with an eternal perspective—don’t worry.
Don’t worry. Look at what He says in the middle of verse 22: “Do not worry about your life.” Look at what He says in verse 25: “And which of you by worrying can add an hour to his life?” Look at what He says in verse 26: “Why do you worry about other matters?” Look at what He says in verse 29: “And do not keep worrying.” And then look at what He says in verse 32. He calls on worry’s cousin and says, “Do not be afraid.”
His message is: don’t worry. I know what I just told you, disciples, shook you up a little bit—because I told you to be rich up there. And I’m telling you now: if you’re rich up there, you won’t have to worry down here. The antidote to worry is a heavenly perspective.
Now, there is a lot in our world to worry about. We worry about our finances. We worry about our careers. We worry about our health. We worry about our age. We worry about terrorism. We worry about the stock market. We worry. We worry. And there is much to worry about in terms of what is happening in the world in which we live. And yet Jesus has the audacity to come on the scene and to tell you and me—for this is written to His disciples in verse 22—“Stop it. Quit it. Don’t worry.”
Now, that raises the question. You know, worry has become a major medical issue. It shows up all kinds of ways. And Jesus has the audacity to say to you and me, His disciples, “Stop it.”
What is this thing called worry? Worry has to do with a monster crawling in your mind that won’t let you rest. It is painful preoccupation with what might be happening to you. Worry is concern gone haywire. Concern is one thing; worry is another. Worry is concern that’s controlling you. Concern you control; worry controls you. It keeps you up. It keeps you from resting. It keeps you stressed out. It keeps you frustrated.
And yet Jesus has the audacity to offer you and me a medication for worry that has nothing to do with the pharmacy. It has everything to do with the perspective.
So today, if you will hear what God says, you should feel—by the time we have concluded—a weight rising off of you. If you are here today and are worried, Jesus says that a heavenly perspective is the antidote to worry, and He will give you reassurance, as He did them, of that fact.
And yet, as you’ve already seen, Jesus says, “Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Don’t do it.” And that seems kind of odd, because most of the time when we are worried, we don’t feel like we can control it—because whatever the thing is we’re worried about just won’t go away. It won’t disappear. And so we wind up being worried when we don’t even want to worry. So God is commanding you to do something that sometimes it doesn’t feel like you can not do even if you want to not do it. And yet He gives you a prescription—for this monster crawling around in our minds called worry.
So let’s see how this thing works—how an eternal perspective calms your earthly concerns. He says in verse 23, the reason you should not worry is: life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing. Life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing. Let me put it another way: we worry about the wrong thing.
Life is more than food. We worry about whether we’re going to eat. If you really want to worry about something, worry about whether you’re going to be alive—because if you’re dead, eating is inconsequential. “Am I going to have food?” No—the question is, “Are you going to get up?” Because life is more important than food. But we tend not to worry about whether we’re going to wake up; we worry about whether we’re going to have the money to buy the food. He says you’re worrying about the lesser thing. The body is more than clothing. If you don’t have a body that’s working, you can’t put on a shirt, pants, dress—the clothing is secondary to having the body to put it on that’s alive and functioning. So if you just have to worry, worry about the bigger thing, not the lesser thing. He says that life is greater than food and your body is greater than the clothes you put on. So if you’ve just got to worry, worry about something big, not something secondary. He shifts our perspective about the priorities in life.
Lessons from Ravens and Lilies
Then He says, “Well, let me help you out a little bit more, disciples. Consider the ravens.” Consider the ravens. Mother Nature comes from Father God, and when Father God created Mother Nature, He placed in Mother Nature lessons for us to live by. He says one of those lessons is the raven.
So let me ask you a question: when’s the last time you studied a raven to learn theology? You probably haven’t looked at a raven and said, “God, what are You teaching me from the raven?” He says, “Nature has been put here to teach you some very substantive lessons about not worrying.” Please notice, He doesn’t say, “Look at the birds.” He says, “Look at the ravens.” He picks a certain kind of bird. Why that bird? Because the raven was an unclean bird. The Jews could not eat the ravens. The ravens in the Old Testament were unclean. So Jesus picks a bird that you wouldn’t fool with anyway if you were Jewish—because He’s speaking to His Jewish disciples. He says, “Consider the bird you would never consider.”
He says, “Let me tell you about this bird. They neither sow nor reap. They don’t have farms. They don’t have seeds. They don’t plant. Neither do they, like the rich man, have a storehouse that they’re building. They don’t have barns. Yet God feeds them.” Wait a minute—now, the ravens eat because God feeds them. How does God feed a raven? You don’t see a raven standing on a branch with its mouth open waiting for worms to drop from heaven. That’s not how they eat. They go find worms. But the beauty of how God feeds them is: He builds into creation that which empowers their existence. God has already put into the way nature works the food for the unclean—the ravens. It’s built into creation.
And then He says, “Are you not much more valuable than they?” Wait a minute—if I will feed an unclean bird in My creation, and you’re My child and My follower—if I value something that I called unclean and make sure there are plenty of worms to go around, and you are My child—do you think I have less concern for you than for them?
So let me repeat this again—to remind me and to remind you—because if you ever get this in your gizzard (that means way deep down in your soul), if it ever settles in your gizzard, in your gut, so that it becomes a way of thinking, functioning, and operating—the lesson you learn from the ravens, that He’s applying to His disciples, you and me, is that the ravens understand that when it comes to eating, God is their source.
It is so hard to get this in the minds of God’s children: you only have one source. You do not have many sources. You have many resources—many mechanisms that God uses. If a raven can’t find a worm over here, it’s going to go over there—because a raven, an unclean bird, understands that God has sufficiently provided so that there is a locatable worm somewhere. They understand that. So a raven over here, when it does not find a worm, does not get an ulcer. It does not need to go to Walgreens to get an Excedrin PM. It doesn’t get all shook up—because the unclean bird assumes something: that the Creator God, who doesn’t even value it like He values a human being, has got enough worms to go around.
When you and I do not understand what the ravens understand, we get all shook up when there is no provision over here, when there is no resource working over here—because we did not have the eternal perspective that understood that God is not limited by the only resource you are aware of.
He says, “Study the ravens. Don’t just watch them fly. Exegete them. Do an exposition of them. Because if you study them, you will not see them fussing, cussing, or complaining. They’re not losing it. And even though you’re more valuable, they may understand it better. The ravens—they don’t have CDs, mutual funds—but they do have a source, and that source covers them. And are you not more valuable than they are?
“Which of you,” verse 25, “by worrying can add a single hour to your lifespan?” He says every time you worry, you waste your time. You do not add to your life; you may be contributing to shortening it. Worry—worry. He says, “Worry is like a rocking chair. It gets you started; it just doesn’t take you anywhere. You just go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.”
He says, “Consider—study—the lilies of the field, the beautiful flowers, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin. They have never taken a sewing class. The beautiful flowers have never gone to buy cloth or to a paint shop to give them their brilliant color. But I tell you, not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these.” He says the beauty in nature comes because of the color coding of the Creator—magnificent colors blending into one another. Brilliant. He says Solomon in all his glory is not arrayed like that—and that is the God who is responsible for you.
He says you’ve got this backwards. You do not understand that I am your source. And yet the flowers, which are here today and gone tomorrow, give testimony to the power of God to provide.
Having made His point, He now wants to take a moment to drive it home to you and me. So He spends the rest of this chapter to drive home the point that an eternal perspective—being rich toward God, making the eternal greater than the temporal, making the spiritual greater than the physical—positions you to experience the sourcing of God at a level that will blow your mind and lift your worry.
Seek First the Kingdom
Verse 29: “And do not seek what you will eat and what you will drink. And do not keep worrying. For all these things the nations of the world eagerly seek, but your Father knows that you need these things.” He says, “Don’t go crazy over the physical. Go crazy over the spiritual—’cause your Daddy knows what your situation is.” Notice He says, “Your Father,” not “their Father.” The Gentiles—thus, the unbeliever—He says all these things the unbelievers go after. They break their necks, ignoring the spiritual in order to accumulate the physical—no matter what it is, whether it’s money or health or power, or whatever it is—substance and significance. They go after that. He says, “No, no, no. You go after Me—because your Father knows what you need.”
Okay, let’s get something straight. It doesn’t say the Father knows what you want. It says, “The Father knows what you need.” Your Father knows where you are. He knows that situation. He knows that source that’s gone left on you. He says, “I know.” To live in worry, He says, is to live like the heathen. He says, “No—you seek—” the way Matthew puts it, “seek first the Kingdom. Prioritize the eternal. Prioritize the spiritual.” And Jeremiah 17:8 says, “When you do, He provides even in a drought.” And I love this phrase: “Do not fear, little flock.” A little flock is a flock of sheep. He says tenderly, “Do not be afraid—’cause I know you’re scared. You’re nervous. ‘If I prioritize the spiritual over the physical, I’m going to lose on the physical.’ Don’t be afraid. Chill. It’s going to be all right. Fear not, little flock.” Because sheep are scared. They’re scared. They want to know, “Am I going to survive if I make this decision to prioritize the spiritual over the physical? If I’m rich toward God and make that more important than being rich among men?”
He says, “If I do that”—remember, this has nothing to do with how much money you have or how much money you don’t have. This has everything to do with how big the bank account is up there versus how big it is down here. It has to do with the eternal over the physical—the spiritual over the temporal. He says, “Fear not, little flock, for your Father has chosen gladly to give you the Kingdom.” Wow. Wow. You see that word—gladly? It just tickles Him to death. He just laughs. Your resource went left on you, and you want to know, “What’s a man going to do? How am I going to make it?” Because your resource went left on you. But if you are rich up there—if the eternal has been prioritized and positioned on the front end and not just on the back end—He says it is your Father’s joy—it’s your Father’s joy—to give you the Kingdom. That is, that which the Kingdom offers; that which heaven disposes to earth.
If you are rich toward God, it’s hard to do a withdrawal from a bank where you haven’t made a deposit. Everybody wants to come to church to withdraw from heaven when there is nothing in the account, and heaven looks at it and says, “Bounce.”
So what are you to do? Interesting statement at the end of verses 33 and 34: “Sell your possessions and give to charity. Make yourselves money belts which do not wear out—an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near nor moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Whoa, whoa, whoa. Now, this one is easy to miss, because I know verse 33 just shook up some folk. He says, “Sell your possessions and give to charity.” That just shook you up, didn’t it? The second half explains the first half. He says, Do that which has eternity tied to it. Okay—being of benefit to others. That’s why Luke 6:38 says, whatever you need, do that for somebody else. Give, and it will be given back to you—because you just made a deposit in heaven. That’s why God talks about Him being first—first with your time, first with your talents, first with your tithe—first. He keeps talking about being first because He says then you position Me as priority. So this is not just about money; it’s about ministry. And He says, You do this first, and you have built up an account from which withdrawals can be made.
And then He gives the clincher. Oh, and it’s a clincher because it’s so misread. He says in verse 34, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Now, let me tell you how most people misread that. They misread that to say, “Where your heart is, your treasure will be.” That’s backwards. It doesn’t say, “Where your heart is, your treasure will be.” It says, “Where your treasure is, your heart will be.” Translation: your heart follows your treasure. Amen. See—so you don’t have to have a heart right now, but you get your treasure right and your heart will—bing!—it will pick up on it.
Don’t let the enemy switch the tags on you. The boys went into the store and they took the tags off the expensive clothes and put them on the cheap clothes—took the tags off the cheap clothes and put them on the expensive clothes. So people were buying cheap clothes and paying expensive prices—’cause somebody had switched the tag. The devil has switched the tags on us, and he has made cheap what’s valuable—the eternal perspective—and made valuable cheap. And so we choose the cheap just because he knows how to put a good sticker on it, a good coloring over it.
God is not complaining that you’ve been blessed—that He’s given you this, that, or the other. He just wants to make sure that you’re more rich up there than you are down here—so when “down here” fails, you’ve got something to withdraw from “up there,” because you’re rich toward God and not merely seeking to be pumped by the Gentiles.
Scripture (KJV/NKJV)
Matthew 6:33 (KJV)
“But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”Luke 12:20–21 (KJV)
“But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”Luke 12:24 (KJV)
“Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls?”Luke 12:27–28 (KJV)
“Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. If then God so clothe the grass… how much more will he clothe you, O ye of little faith?”Jeremiah 17:7–8 (KJV)
“Blessed is the man that trusteth in the LORD, and whose hope the LORD is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters… and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit.”
Questions This Sermon Answers
- What is the biblical antidote to worry?
- Why does Jesus command His disciples not to worry?
- How do the ravens and lilies illustrate God’s provision?
- What does it mean to be “rich toward God”?
- How does “seeking first the Kingdom” reorder our priorities and resources?
- Why does our heart follow our treasure, not the other way around?
