↓ Our Savior Lutheran Church, Grants Pass, OR
↓ Faith Lutheran Church, Medford OR
Matthew 6:24-34
DON’T WORRY; FATHER KNOWS
PRAYER Dear LORD, Make us Your children and keep us Your children so that You will always be our Father. Help us to trust in You as children trust their Father, and teach us to pray to You with all boldness and confidence, just like little children approaching their Father. We are Your children, only by Your grace in Jesus. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
DO NOT WORRY … YOUR HEAVENLY FATHER KNOWS BEST
APROPOS’ TODAY Our nation’s peace and security is threatened and the whole world’s health and safety is threatened. The future is a misty haze of who-knows-what. So, perhaps, it’s never been harder for us to follow Jesus’ instruction: “Do not worry.” But then, it’s never been more soothing to hear His reassurance: “Your Heavenly Father knows.”
FOR [KIDS &] ADULTS “Do not worry.” Jesus speaks this to adults mainly, in the Sermon on the Mount. We hear this, and pay attention to it, more as adults. This subject of “worry” is more from the world of grown-ups. Maybe grown-ups worry more than children do. Children have fears, but they’re mostly fears of the unknown. Adults know more, see what can hurt them, have experienced it, want to avoid it, and so they worry.
CHILDREN OF THE FATHER
times in 11 verses, and it still doesn’t seem like it’s enough. Over and over He says it, over and over we worry. So Jesus takes us out of the world of grown-ups with all the worries, and reminds us that we are children. “Your Heavenly Father knows.” He reminds us, we’re children of the Heavenly Father.
[RECEIVE] LIKE A KID The ones who are God’s children in the true sense are the ones who receive everything the Father wishes to give His children. These are Christians. If you are a Christian, then you’re a true child of God. You receive everything He wants His children to have. How do you do this? – In Jesus’ famous Words, by receiving the Kingdom of God like a little child does. You don’t become a Christian by impressing God with your knowledge or deeds or maturity. You become a Christian by receiving His grace in Jesus, like an infant does in Baptism. He gives you faith.
BELIEF, NOT WORKS This key thing about being a child of God is believing. You are not a child of God by doing. You’re only a child of God by believing. It’s the mark of a true child.
MY DAD A child trusts his father. My own father was an engineer-designer and draftsmen. [Also with things at home like wood projects or model airplanes…] My dad would tell us sons the best way to proceed. My father knew [best]. I trusted him. If I would not have trusted him, I would have been suggesting he didn’t know. But as I proceeded confidently on my way, trusting my father’s directions, I was being a real son of a father who knew.
“Do not worry.” Jesus says it 5
BELIEVING IS THE MARK Today Jesus teaches us to go confidently on our way. He teaches us to be children of the Father Who knows. He teaches us to believe, and not to worry. Jesus says, “Do not worry,” because worrying is not believing. Now, you are a child of God by believing; believing is the mark of God’s children. So then, not believing – worrying – is something His children would not do, right? But we do worry.
THIS, THAT AND THE… We don’t think of our worry as something that involves God. We worry about this, and we worry about that. We see a danger, that’s when we worry. We think we don’t have something we need, that’s when we worry.
IN THE PRESENT It doesn’t seem to have a connection to God. But it does. What is it that we say, when we say “This I believe” – The very First Commandment [explanation] is: “We should fear, love and trust God above ALL things.” What does this mean? What are we saying? The Catechism teaches us, this is also what we are saying: “I trust God (and no one else, including myself) that He protectS me” – that’s a present-tense verb, as in: He still protects me, today, every day and even when Corona is coming into our country and homes, even though God sees and knows, “that He protects me from all danger, guards and keeps me from all evil.” That’s what we’re saying when, “We fear, love and trust God above all things.”
CAN HE REALLY DO IT/?! To worry is suggesting our Heavenly Father doesn’t do, or isn’t able to do, what we say we believe He alone can do. When we worry, we say: I don’t believe it. When we worry we say, “He can do some of this, but I can’t ONLY depend on Him.” When we worry, we say: “I don’t believe God gives me everything I need, each and every day; He can give me some of what I need, but I need more. When we worry, we say: I don’t believe God protects me from all danger and every evil of body and soul.”
WORRY-WARTS The reason this is important, that Jesus says “Do not worry” over and over, is not to lead us to think we aren’t good children. The concern isn’t just that we are worriers and don’t trust Him well. You don’t stop being His child the second you worry. But this is the concern: When we worry, we leave our True Father and look for another. It’s true.
INTO THE WORLD… The Heavenly Father sends us into the world as His children, believing and trusting in Him, protected by Him, fed and clothed by Him. Then we face a danger, or a trial. We go without. At such times, we should – as His children – consider ourselves sheltered by the Wings of His mercy, held by His everlasting Arms underneath us, surrounded by the protecting band of His holy angels, fed with His manna from above. We should. But often the first thing we do is swivel our necks about in anxious fear, looking at everything that is against us, looking for someone [else] to take care of us. We look to human means to make our homes and money and selves safe. We look for riches and security in what we see and feel, not in His promises to believe. This is forsaking our true Father’s protection, and looking for protection from somewhere else.
NEED DIRECTION But we want to know how to get there, when everything in the world seems to block our way. How do we find our way to the Father, and His protecting arms?
JESUS IS THE WAY The answer is the One Who speaks these Words today: Jesus. Jesus said: “I am the Way…No one comes to the Father except through Me.” It isn’t only true on the day we become Christians. It’s true every day. When we worry, we forsake the Father. We have to get back. Jesus is the Way. How do we come to the Father? “Through ME,” Jesus said.
SCATTERING & GATHERING You see, we have to remember how we even are God’s children in the first place. It’s through Jesus. He makes us God’s children. John 11:52 says that, through Jesus’ death, “He would gather together in one the children of God who were scattered abroad.” The devil scatters us each day, just like he scattered Jesus’ own disciples in Gethsemane, in their hour of trial. He scatters the sheep, drives them in the opposite direction from their Shepherd. But what brought them back? What brings us back? Jesus’ Blood, His Blood that washed away all our sin, His Blood that pleads for our pardon and the forgiveness of all our sins. His Blood is what makes us God’s children, and keeps us God’s children.
HIS RIGHTEOUSNESS– Jesus directs us first to “His Righteousness.” In all our trials and all our need, in all the ways that we think we are weak and vulnerable, He directs us to “His Righteousness,” that is, to Jesus’ innocent Blood that makes us righteous. It makes us and keeps us God’s children.
SMALL THINGS Usually we think of the least things that we need, the short-term, the most immediate, pressing problems. This means also that we think if we knew every Corona case was gone, there were no more enemies, everything in our country was completely safe and secure again, and the stock market was doing as well it was before, then our problems would be over and we would be all right. But our God does not simply have in mind what we do. “My ways are higher than your ways,” the Lord says in Isaiah, “and My thoughts [higher] than your thoughts.” Our Heavenly Father knows … [He knows] That we need Jesus, first of all – even if we don’t know it, or think about it. Our Savior has ensured that we will be made far richer, far happier, far more safe and secure than we are praying to be, and more than that, He has put us beyond the grasp even of death.
GRACIOUS ALSO Not only is God “Our Heavenly Father,” as Jesus says, but He is our gracious heavenly Father – the one who gives grace. That is why our Lutheran fathers have said He gives “grace and every blessing.” Along with grace comes every blessing you can ever think of. In Jesus, we are with the Father, and with the Father we have every blessing.
HOW WE TRUST This is how we trust in Him, and show that He is our Father, and thereby we are His children, perfectly taken care of in every need. God never yet forsook indeed; The soul that trusted Him in need.