Seeking the Kingdom

Welcome to Gospel In Life. During January, we are inviting our listeners to consider becoming a Gospel In Life monthly partner. Monthly partners are an important part in helping us to plan for how we can be the most effective in reaching people all over the world with the Gospel. If you'd like to become a monthly partner, just visit gospelinlife.com/partner. That's gospelinlife.com/partner. What is holding you back from truly trusting in God? From not just believing in His existence, but letting the power of His Word change how you approach daily life, work, and relationships? In today's message, Tim Keller looks at one of Jesus' most well-known teachings to explain how true faith begins when we stop trying to control our own lives and start trusting in the God who knows exactly what we need. Matthew 6, 25, through 34. 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 and all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God closed the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow was thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothes you owe you a 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 these things and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first is kingdom and is 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. This is a Presbyterian Church, I heard somebody ready to say amen. We're looking at the sermon on the Mount and today we come to Jesus command not to be anxious. Three times he says, don't be anxious, a quick question that comes up. How can somebody, how does anybody have the audacity to command us not to be anxious? Who wants to be anxious? Nobody gets up in the morning and says, I'm going to really be anxious today, I can't wait. It's not a very voluntary thing. So why would Jesus command us? If we look carefully, we'll see that he's not commanding us in a kind of drill sergeant way. There's a friend of mine, a pastor, friend of mine, who was poking fun at himself. He's in his fifties now, but when they first got married, he and his wife, and in the early 20s, he was saying that she went into a depression and he used all of his every bit of skill he could to get her out of it. He says, I tried everything, everything, every single morning, I went into her and I said, "Buck up!" But nothing helped. He says, she was incorrigible. Jesus is not coming to us today and saying, "Buck up. What are you being anxious for? Cut it out. Stop it. Whistle a happy tune." He doesn't do anything like that. Instead, if you look carefully, you'll see that he gets underneath and he explains to us the why and he reasons with us. There's a sense in which he does surgery and he says, anxiety is wrong and if you sit still and let me do my surgery in you, if you listen to my instructions, I can get it out of you. I can remove it. So there is an obedience, but at the same time there's definitely a sense here that Jesus says, I'm going to show you how to get underneath the surface and how you can let me get underneath the surface and deal with anxiety. Three times, don't be anxious, Jesus says. Now, what's anxiety? First question, what is it? Good question. It's actually easier to describe than to define. There's a time magazine, not too long ago, said it's the most prevailing quality of our modern culture and I think the reason for that is anxiety is more than a psychological thing. It's got a psychological and a physical and a philosophical aspect. See, psychologically, anxiety, of course, can either be focused on a specific danger, but anxiety can be a debilitating general condition that is not really focused on any particular cause and the best way to describe it, it's like having a constant, jaws, theme, base note line going through your life, you know, bump, bump, bump, bump, you're looking around for the fin. You're sure something's going wrong. It's called neurotic. You know, it's a frightening thing and it really can characterize our whole life psychologically better. More than that, anxiety also is a physical aspect, physically, anxiety is called stress. We know this. We know that our bodies have an autonomic nervous system so that when there's a danger, our bodies can suddenly get actually triggered, that system gets triggered by the anxiety, by the danger and we begin to pump adrenaline and begin to pump in all kinds of other things that gets us ready for what's called the fight or flight. We're ready for dramatic drastic action. So when danger appears, our body has a way of getting itself ready to do something. But if you find that you're constantly living with stress, that every day, day in and day out, you're constantly living with perceived dangers, financial dangers and professional dangers, and relationship dangers, you find that your body is always in that condition and your body's not supposed to be like that. The system's not supposed to be going off every day and eventually you literally burn up. You burn out and ulcers and hypertension and high blood pressure is a result. But anxiety even has a philosophical aspect. You know, Heidegger and the German existentialist talked about angst but they also talked about my favorite word, govorfenheit. The thrownness, a feeling of being thrown into the world, no rhyme or reason to things. And when you read an article about, last Christmas, about a little boy in the Bronx sitting at table on Christmas Eve and a Stray Bullet just coming tearing up through the ceiling up through the floor, tearing up through the wall, tearing right into the room, hitting him in the head and killing him right at the table. And when you read stories like that and if you look for them there in the New York Times every day, you begin to feel that govorfenheit, the anxiety that's even more philosophical, even than psychological with sense that there's no rhyme or reason to things. It can be so prevailing, anxiety can and does, in fact, every part of our lives. Every soul and spirit interlocking, but what is it? And I think when Jesus says, don't worry about tomorrow at the very end of the passage. He's summing up everything else he said. Worry is concern about the potential, not the actual worry, is concern about that which we can't control. The essence of anxiety is the desire to control that which we can't control. That's why we're anxious. We feel the need for control in an area where there's no possibility of control. That causes anxiety. Now, that's what it is. Anxiety is the will to control the uncontrollable. Secondly, if that's what it is, where does it come from? When the Bible, as usual, is as far away the most coherent answer. Jesus Christ is, if you look carefully, you'll see that in a very general way, he is saying the source of anxiety is the human will to power. The fact is that we want the power that God's got and anxiety comes from that. He says, for example, he says, who by being anxious can add one minute to your life, but that's the point. We want to add, we want the power God has. And Jesus is saying, isn't life more than food and drink? And who, by worrying, can add one minute to your life, what he's saying is, listen, who's been keeping your life going all these years anyway? What are you worried about it now for? Put it this way. He says, when the doctor comes in with bad news, when the boss comes in with bad news, suddenly we get anxious because we feel like we're out of control. But it's the threat that reveals the illusion that we've been living on all these years. The illusion is we've felt up to now that we were in control. We're getting anxious because we feel like we're getting out of control. That's not true. The threat is revealing your true condition. You've always been out of control. You've always been vulnerable. You've never been keeping your life going. And you see danger, which triggers anxiety. The anxiety is essentially showing us not a new precarious condition. But at the deepest level, that's where Heidegger comes in with his Gavorphine Heide. At the deepest level, it's showing us what we knew all along. We've never been in charge. We're not in control. And Jesus says that we're anxious because we disbelieve and dislike the fact that we're totally dependent on the supporting power of God. We don't like it and we are afraid of it and that's what the anxiety is. Biblically though, there's a wonderful truth underneath all this. Pascal, the Christian philosopher, has a very interesting statement. The great thing about Christianity is even when it's telling you what's wrong with you, it tells it to you in such a positive way because it shows you. It shows you where it's from. Pascal puts it like this. He says, not on page three, but on page two. He says, "The greatness of man is so evident that it is even proved by his wretchedness. For who is unhappy at not being a king, but a deposed king?" Now, you know what he's saying? The Bible says the reason we're anxious is because we need to be in control. The reason we want to be in control is we were made originally to be kings and queens on earth. The Bible tells us that we were built to be stewards. Now, a steward was the number one slave in a great mansion. The steward was the slave with authority. A steward was a slave toward the master, but toward everyone else he was a king. And when a steward is a slave toward his master, dependent, loving, obedient, he grows in his authority. That's the kind of king that we were built to be. The Bible tells us, though, in the book of Genesis, that we didn't like being in charge of everything except God. We wanted to be in charge of everything. We wanted to be our own masters and trying to become more than human would become less than ourselves. And today, how do we respond to this need for control which comes from the fact we were built to be kings? The fact we were built for glory. We respond now the way we responded then. We're no different than Adam and Eve. We try to get more power and more control. And the more we try to get power and control and be our own masters, the less powerful we feel. And so Reinhold Niebuhr, a man who taught at Union Seminary for years, has a fascinating statement about the relationship of theology to psychology, he says, the schools of modern psychology, which regard the will to power as the most dominant of human motives, has not yet recognized how basically it's related to insecurity, anxiety. The human ego does not feel secure and therefore grass for more power in order to make itself secure. It does not regard itself as sufficiently significant or respected and seeks to enhance its position. Did you hear that? We're insecure because we want power. And the more we want power, the more we seek to control our lives, the more we resent the fact that God's actually in control of our lives, the more insecure we get. Anxiety comes from that will to power. That's why Luther looked at Malanthon, his friend Philip Malanthon one day, who was worried. Full of anxiety about how things were going and instead of Luther saying, "Buck up!" He did surgery. He went underneath and said to Philip, he says, "Let Philip cease to rule the world." You know why you're anxious, Philip, you want to be in charge. You're trying to be in charge. Let Philip cease to rule the world. We have to assert ourselves anxiety comes when we do. What's anxiety? The need for control of the uncontrollable. Where does it come from? Our basic essential nature is kings and queens, which we are trying to express by being masters of our own lives when we're not. And number three, well then what do we do about it? And you say, "This is wonderful." This is very interesting. It makes me feel very interested, but what do I do? And again, Jesus would never just say, "Buck up!" He tells you what to do. And essentially in this passage, he says, "If you're full of anxiety, psychological, physical, philosophical, whatever, there are two things you're doing wrong and therefore if you want to remove the anxiety from your life, there's two things you've got to do right." The two things you're doing wrong is wrong thinking and wrong priorities, wrong thinking and wrong priorities. Here's what we mean. Number one, wrong thinking. Again and again, he says, "In the old King James," he says, "consider the birds of the air, consider the lilies of the field." Now in our modern translations of the one that I just read, I didn't write it. I'd be a rich man if I wrote it. It just says, "Look at." It says, "See the birds of the air." It says, "Look at the grass of the field." That's not nearly as good a word because the word that's used there is a word that means ponder and think. Jesus says, "If you're anxious, you're not thinking." He says, "Do not be anxious, but consider this. Consider that." Now listen, before I even move on, do you see how critical that is? What do you think faith is? Do you think faith is an absence of thinking? Do you think faith is just closing your eyes and jumping? Do you think faith says, "Well, it doesn't make any sense, but it doesn't matter. That's where faith comes in." Is that how Jesus talks? No way. Jesus says faith is thinking. He says, "It's anxiety that's the absence of thinking, anxiety and fear and distress." You see, when you're sitting and listening to your heart run off at the mouth. That's what makes you scared. When your heart starts to ramble, it starts to just react to situations. See, it runs at the mouth, the way you do, and I do, if you don't think before you speak. So you're laying in bed and the heart's just saying, "Oh, how bad it's going to be. I know how awful it's going to be, and what am I going to do about this?" You're listening to your heart instead of talking to your heart. Listening to your heart is what Jesus says brings the anxiety. Instead, you sit down with your heart and say, "Wait. Look at the facts. Consider this. Consider that. You argue. You talk. Friends, faith is not passing peaceful thoughts through your mind and faith is not turning your mind off. Faith is a position of confidence toward the world based on what God has said in His word." We all chase things like success, true love, or the perfect life. Good things that can easily become ultimate things. When we put our faith in them, deep down, we know they can't satisfy our deepest longings. The truth is that we've made lesser gods of good things, things that can't give us what we really need. In his book, "Counterfeit Gods," the empty promises of money, sex, and power and the only hope that matters, Tim Keller shows us how a proper understanding of the Bible reveals the truth about societal ideals and our own hearts, and shows us that there is only one God who can wholly satisfy our desires. This month, we'll send you counterfeit gods as our thank you for your gift to help Gospel and Life share the love of Christ with people all over the world. You can request your copy at gospelandlife.com/give. If you don't believe what God has spoken in His Word, there is absolutely no way to deal with anxiety, period. I defy anybody to tell me there is another one. But if you understand that He's spoken, then you take it and you argue with yourself, and Jesus gives you two arguments. The first argument is, go to the Word and see that God is in charge, and the first argument is this bird's of the air argument. The second argument is this grass of the field argument. Do you know how to use these two? I don't want anybody to leave here without knowing how. The first argument is a providence of God argument, and the second one is a love of God. The first argument, Jesus says, is consider the birds. God is in charge of them. God gives them what they need. You don't have the power to add even one minute to your life. And He's saying God has all the power. God's in charge. God's sovereign. God is a God of providence. Do you know how to use that on your heart? The average New Yorker providence is the capital of Rhode Island. But the word providence, from which the neighbors of the capital of Rhode Island, God, the word providence comes from provide, provideance. Providence, the doctrine of the providence of God, is that everything that happens to you is part of God's plan. That everything you have is part of God's provision. Ephesians 1-11 says, everything is working out according to the counsel of His will. Romans 8-28 says, all things work together for good to them that love God. And Jesus says, there is absolutely no way, no way, that you could possibly deal with anxiety unless you believe that. Well somebody says, that doesn't make me feel better. I feel then like I'm a puppet. I feel like there's everything is determined. It doesn't matter what I do. And if you jump to that conclusion, you have moved away from the biblical doctrine of providence to a pagan notion of fate. They're not the same thing. Let me give you two perfect examples in the Bible. Acts chapter 2, verse 23, that's the place where Peter is talking to the people of Jerusalem. And he says, every one of you, he says, Christ was delivered by the determinant council and four plan of God, and you have slain Him by wicked hands. Did you hear that? When Jesus Christ died, wasn't that death for ordained? Wasn't it planned? It says He was delivered by the determinant council and four plan of God. And yet, even though you were destined to kill Him, even though it was purpose that you kill Him, it was wicked when you killed Him. And what is what God is saying here, what Peter is saying is fairly easy to see in a sense, he is saying, the wickedness of your heart, your responsible for, your choices you're responsible for. He says, God doesn't make you wicked, but on the other hand, God works through your choices his perfect plan. That's why Joseph could talk to his brothers who sold him into slavery, and he went down into Egypt and he almost was almost put to death. But then he eventually became a powerful man and he was able to save his family later on from famine. And he looks at his brothers and he says, you minute for evil, God minute for good. What does that mean? Joseph said, God led you to sell me into slavery. It was part of his plan. It looked terrible and looked awful, but it was part of his plan. And he intended it for good. Does that mean therefore brothers you didn't do anything wrong? You couldn't help yourself. It was faded. Of course not. Joseph didn't mean that. And the brothers knew he didn't mean that. And the brothers wept, they were repented because you see they were responsible for their choice. And yet God worked his counsel out infallibly. And Jesus says, until you understand that, until you believe that, it's impossible for you to deal with anxiety, absolutely. That's the reason why there's a certain sense in which we can say, in Romans 8, 28, all things work together for good to them that love God. The minute you stop being the center of the universe, the minute you take yourself away from being the center of the universe is the day you become the center of the universe. For example, some of you have been very helped by this church. There's only been here for seven or eight months. You know why it's here? It's because that I had some denominational connections, some people in my Presbyterian denomination asked me to come here, gave me the support to come here. Why am I in my denomination? Because my last year of seminary, a man came from England and taught several courses that convinced me that I wanted to go into this particular denomination. Why was he there? Well, it was a close call. He was English and back then in the early 70s. It was very hard for somebody to get a visa to come here and take a job. One day the den of my seminary was praying on his knees saying, "Oh Lord, how are we going to get this professor here? We need him to teach next semester." And one of the students of the seminary was Mike Ford, who was Gerald Ford's son, who was then president of the United States. Mike Ford came and said, "What's the problem?" The den told him. Mike Ford says, "Well, I'll talk to somebody." Next thing you know, next thing you know, the professor was here. He got his visa. Why was Mike Ford the son of the president? Because Nixon resigned. Why did Nixon resign? Because of Watergate. What was Watergate? One day a security guard happened to notice a door that was a jar in the Watergate building. One day! Huh? What if he had driven to work a different route that day? This church wouldn't be here. Listen. When you take yourself out of the center of the universe, you actually become the center of the universe in this sense. All things work together for good, and then I love God. You know what that means? D.C., it actually says there's a certain sense in which when you finally give yourself over to God and say, "I trust you." You begin to realize that everything that's happening, everything that's happening, even Watergate is happening for me. Everything is happening for me. The minute you finally say, "I'm not going to be in the center anymore." I'm not going to demand the explanation. I'm not going to only try to stay in control of my life. I'm going to be willing to say, "Lord, you know what's best." In Philippians 4, it says, "Have no anxiety, but in everything with prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, make your request known to God." That means when you ask God for something, thank Him ahead of time for whatever He sends. "Wow, can you do that?" You say. It means get a conviction that He would not give you anything that's wrong or that's bad. You know, our parents spend all of our lives, when I was a little kid, my parents always were ruining my life. They were always saying, "Stop swallowing those rocks. Stop sticking that fork into that electrical outlet." You know, these people didn't know how to live. They're ruining my life. I was not able to swing until I got older and I realized they were saving my life every day. Some people say, "If I really trust Him like that, if I give myself to Him, He may start to tell me things that I don't want to do. He may start to give me things that I don't want to have. He may start to command me to do things I don't want to obey. Of course, He'll tell you things you don't want to do. What's the use of having a king? If you're wise and smart enough to do it yourself, but you have a king and a king is there because you're not wise and smart enough to know how to control your own life." Abraham didn't want to give up Isaac. Moses didn't want to go to Pharaoh. Jesus didn't want to go to the cross, but his will is wise and right and good and the people who submit to it will spend the next billion years thanking Him that He had it, that He gave it to them. Of course, He's not safe. Who said anything about Him being safe, but He's good. He's the king, I tell you. The other little thing that you've got to do is use the grass of the field. The grass of the field argument is different. The one argument is to say, "He's in control. Who else could I trust but Him?" But the other little argument is the love of God argument. Jesus says, "Your Father knows what you need." That's where you get your heart and you start to argue, "God's love into the heart." You go like this. Listen, heart. You know that He loves you more than you imagine. You know that He knows all the hairs on your head and how many tears have come down as your cheeks. You know that. You know that if He didn't spare His own Son, how is He going to fail to give us anything else that we need? You argue with yourself and you begin to realize anxiety is essentially a daily facts to God saying, "I don't think you have my best interests in mind." Why is this? Anxiety is essentially saying, "Father, you emptied heaven of your greatest treasure and you executed your Son voluntarily for me and I'm not sure you aren't going to know how to arrange my week." And when you realize what you're saying, you begin to realize you are offending His love. There's no way you would possibly put up with somebody. You wouldn't put up with a kid. You wouldn't put up with a friend who continually trampled on your love the way you do. You argue with your heart. He's my father. He knows what I need. Now and then the other thing is wrong priorities. Wrong thinking and wrong priorities and the wrong priorities are pretty simple. Seek first His kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be added unto you. Know what that means? Martha and Mary. You remember Martha and Mary? Jesus came to their house and Martha ran around and literally it says she was anxious doing many, many things. It uses the same word anxious that Jesus uses here in Matthew 6. Mary sat at Jesus' feet and Jesus comes to Martha and says, "Martha, you're anxious and troubled about many, many, many things." One thing is necessary. Mary's found it, sit down and focus on me. And what Jesus is saying is worry is always a lack of proportion. If Jesus is in the center, there will be no anxiety. If you're profession, if you're relationship, if you're material comfort, if money, if anything else is in the center, if anything else is more important than Christ, you're going to be torn up with anxiety. Your fears are like the breadcrumbs, follow them and you'll find the house of the witch. Your anxieties come from that lack of proportion, from that lack of sense of proportion. And Jesus says, "Put me first. Seek first my kingdom and righteousness." That means your prayer life. It means your fellowship with other Christians. It means your mission and ministry. It means your growth and grace. If that comes first, Jesus says, "I can guarantee you your other concerns will go." Because you'll be able to think more about me and trust me. Queen Elizabeth once told a man, not the second Queen Elizabeth, the first Queen Elizabeth, told a man that she wanted him to go on a voyage to the new world because we needed his skills on this voyage to make it a success. And the man looked at her and said, "Hey, I'm a small businessman and my business has been floundering and if I go on it, I'm sure it's going to sink." And she looked at him. She says, "My dear friend, you mind my business and I'll mind your business." And immediately all the fear left him because, "Hey, here's a Queen Elizabeth, a monarch of absolute power and wealth. If I mind her business, show mine my business, what a deal." Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all the things will be added to you. It's the same, it's the same, it's the same deal. Right thinking, right priorities, wrong thinking, wrong priorities. Listen, two kinds of people here today. Here's some of you who have certainly believed in Jesus Christ, received him as Savior. It's one thing to put faith in him and enter the Kingdom, it's another thing to walk by faith. I can remember some years ago talking to a guy and I said, "We were counseling together and I said, "Do you trust in Jesus Christ to save you? Do you believe your sins are covered? Do you believe in that?" And he says, "Yes, yes, I certainly believe in that. I certainly trust him." And then I said, "Do you trust him enough to obey what he says in his word about not marrying someone who's not a believer? Do you trust him enough to obey what he says and to wait for a spiritual person to marry?" Silence. Because you see, it's a one thing to believe in him, it's another thing to believe in him. It's one thing to believe in God, lots of you believe in God, but do you believe God? And Jesus is saying, "Trust me, not just believe in me. Trust me. Listen to what I say, obey me." Seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness. And there's some of you that possibly are here saying, "You know, I know I've never really put my faith in Christ the way you're saying. I've never received him as Savior, I've never put him in the center." And some of you are saying, "I would like to, but I've never been able to believe. I wish I could believe, but I had never been able to believe." Listen, there's only two doctrines on which to base your life. Only two. Either you are competent to run your own life or God is. And your problem when you say, "I can't believe, it's not really fair to put it that way." Your real problem is you refuse to doubt yourself. You think you're competent to run your own life. You're afraid to give your life to Christ. That is an act of absolutely blind faith. There's no evidence for it. And you know it. It's a leap against the evidence. You refuse to doubt yourself. That's why you can't believe. Don't tell me that you can't believe in God. What you mean is I refuse to doubt myself even though I've got every bit of evidence. I don't care how successful you are. One of the most successful people are making a total mess of some parts of their lives. Come to him. Jesus Christ knew what it was to trust God. In the wilderness, the devil came and said, "Turn these stones into bread." And he didn't do it. Why? He continued to depend on God. He wouldn't take matters into his own hands. He wouldn't decide to disobey God getting control. And because he was faithful, he died as a substitute. And he took the punishment that we deserve for our will to power. And that means today you can go to him and know that if you believe not just in him but believe him, he's your substitute. Your sins are wiped away and you put yourself in the hands of a father who knows what you need. The name of the Lord is a strong tower, run into it and you're safe, let's pray. Now we ask Father that you will enable us to by faith recommit ourselves to you. Meet us at your table, we pray in Jesus' name, amen. Thanks for listening to Tim Keller on the Gospel & Life Podcast. If you'd like to see more people encouraged by the Gospel Center teaching and resources of this ministry, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel & Life monthly partner. Your monthly partnership helps us to plan and steward our resources throughout the year to be the most effective in reaching people all over the world with the life giving power of Christ's love. And as a small thank you for your monthly support, we will mail you a physical copy of each new life in the Gospel quarterly journal that you can enjoy and share with others. To learn more, just visit gospelandlife.com/partner. That website again is gospelandlife.com/partner. Today's sermon was recorded in 1990. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel & Life Podcast were recorded between 1989 and 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church. [Music]