Anxiety-Free Living, Part 1 B

If God gave you life and he did.

If he wants you to live and he does. If you're alive if he brought you into his kingdom and he has.

Then he has a purpose for you to fulfill in his kingdom to his glory, and so he will sustain you to the stop sign will remind you to stop focusing on your fears and think of something else. Well that kind of gimmick may temporarily make you forget your troubles, but it won't help you get to the root of the problem and truly overcome anxiety to do that you need to understand where anxiety comes from and why.

If you're Christian you have everything you need to be content today.

John MacArthur shows you how to put away worry for good as he continues his study here on grace to you titled anxiety free living now with the lesson. Here's John Wren look now in Luke chapter 12 verses 22 to 34. Luke 1222 to 34. This portion of Scripture contains some things that you're going to find familiar to you. And that's because much of what Jesus says here in Judea months before his death he said, also in Galilee long before this in what we know is a sermon on the Mount. In fact, the passage in Luke 1222 to 34 is a direct parallel to Matthew six versus what about verse 19 on down to the end of the chapter verse 34 so you will find a very, very close parallel to that text in Matthew chapter 6, which you can compare on your own when I can bounce back and forth. This then is sort of at the heart of Jesus familiar teaching, which he no doubt. Not only had recorded in two places in the in the Scripture, but no doubt preached on many occasions in many different places. The key to understanding the passage before us, which you will find familiar to you. Things like, be not anxious for your life. Consider the ravens consider the lilies seek the kingdom, and these things will be added to you where your treasure is, your heart will be also. Those are familiar things. But as we pull the passage together. The thing that ties it all up is a statement that Jesus makes three times essentially verse 22. Do not be anxious and then verse 29.

Do not keep worrying and then verse 32. Do not be afraid. And so I've entitled this passage worry free living, or anxiety free living, or stress free living, I understand.

While the why the world is stressed out. I understand why people are anxious. I understand why they worry I understand why they have panic attacks. It's frightening to be dangling in this inexplicable universe and feeling all alone and not being able to figure out why you're even here and where you're going. I understand there's a certain cosmic theater. I understand why people take drugs and drink and go on eating eating binges and shopping binges and wild adventures in all kinds of things to fill their minds with the other thoughts we are living in an anxiety ridden culture and the amazing thing about it is this is the most indulged the most lavish society ever.

This is the most comfortable society ever.

This is the society that has the most, but it seems to be the most angst ridden, anxious, stressed out, panicked culture ever. We have a massive medical world that exists to do nothing but help people with stress. No worry goes unnamed. No worry goes on to find no worry goes on catalog.

No worry goes undiagnosed and no worry goes on medicated they just go on relieved people live with anxiety delivered worry deliver stress that it's so common that we going to talk about eliminating it.

The term is to manage it. You take a course to go to a seminar.

Listen to a lecture by a tape on stress management like it was a baseball team needed a manager or production line when Jesus comes along and says I'm not to teach you how to manage her stress all eliminated.

According to Ohio State University. The goal of any treatment is to make anxiety a manageable part of daily existence. The best the world can offer you is to manage her anxiety. Jesus offers you to limited that's not good.

Get rid of it altogether. Stop it.

In fact, you could basically translate verse 22, stop being anxious. Verse 29. Stop worrying. Verse 32.

Stop being afraid the world will offer you cognitive behavior therapy or a long list of drugs that are compassionate God offers a far better solution. That's the elimination of your anxiety altogether. Stop being anxious. Stop worrying stop being afraid in these verses as they unfold them all away to verse 34. There are several points that I want to unpack 46 of them and they show that worry arises from a failure to understand something about God.

First of all, let's look at the first one. Worry is a failure to understand divine priority.

Worry is a failure to understand divine priority. I'm under divine priority. The simple idea is this folks, get it for those who are in the kingdom.

If God gave you life and he did. If he wants you to live and he does. If you're alive if he brought you into his kingdom and he has. Then he has a purpose for you to fulfill in his kingdom to his glory, and so he will sustain you to that fulfillment. But if you understand the divine priority that is that you live and exist for the purpose of God and God will sustain your life until that purpose is fulfilled than you not to worry about it. Second worry. Then fails to understand divine priority. Secondly, worry fails to understand divine provision, it fails to understand divine provision.

Look at verse 24 consider the ravens were crows for they neither sow nor reap, and they have no storeroom nor barn, and yet God feeds them. How much more valuable you are.

Then the birds fix birds because either sort of the I guess the most fragile that they just are here and kinda gone short-lived for the most part, certainly to the ravens of the crows, but their great illustration of divine provision, you know, there is every crow that several of every Raven that's ever live.

God wanted to live and for however long God wanted that bird to live. He provided its food and if God feeds birds that only in a very modest way in a very good way. Give him glory as any of his creation does not think he could take care of making sure you can eat who have the highest and noblest capacity to give him glory. This, by the way, is also in Matthew 626 is an analogy from the lesser to the greater common in Jewish teaching. Consider the ravens and I just think this is probably true. Anyway, Jesus is teaching in the outdoors, typically end wherever there was an agricultural society where ever there was a field. There were crows.

That's why we have such thing as a scare crow and that was certainly a problem over there by the way, there were more birds in Israel probably still true than any place on the planet that is because the birds that migrate out of northern Europe. Out of all of Europe and even stretching into the Middle East and the East. If they want to migrate south in in the cold winter they have to go through Israel. It's the largest area of bird migration on the planet because East is the desert barren with little or nothing in West is the Mediterranean. That little land is the most fertile soil in the world and it's always been a dense place for bird migration. The Israeli Air Force has lost more pilots and more planes to birds decapitating pilots by going to the cockpit because of flying so fast into a flock than they have in military combat and all the planes go in and out of the Ben-Gurion in Tel Aviv or going many times are having to deal with these birds so they done migration studies to determine what flocks come at what period of the year and how they come and where they come and where they land. And they've relocated pools of water etc. etc. to protect the Jets because the birds get in the engines and that's obviously a problem, massive place of bird migration which fits the biblical scene in Ezekiel and Revelation where that after Armageddon the carnage of the dead bodies in that part of the world is so great, it says the birds come and eat them may indicate that during that migration season is when that event might happen. But anyway birds were everywhere and Jesus probably said you know look at them.

They don't sow and reap. You do your out here slaving away, plowing, putting the seed in watering the seed coming along to the backbreaking work of harvest. They don't do that and they don't have a storeroom and they'll have a barn therein, capably saying of generating their own food supply. They are totally dependent on God.

What is provided for them by the creator is all they have. They don't have the ingenuity or the capability they only have the capability and the instinct to pick up what's been provided for the that doesn't mean they don't work there see a bird lying outside taking a nap I birds are in constant motion by dear Patricia loves birds and she really loves birds so we have what six or eight birdfeeders in the backyard. So when you go out the back door you have to sort of duck because when they're everywhere.

It's like an aviary in our yard which is wonderful. We enjoy that part of God's creation. They are absolutely relentless. They fight each other at those little birdfeeders and when they knock seed to the ground. They fight each other on the ground. They chase each other around. They jacket each other to get those seats and when those things are empty. They're gone at that honey they're gone and we'll see him and then she fills them all up or I fill them all up and I don't know how the word gets out, but somebody goes and they're all back is not dozens and dozens of them were not talking about the fact you don't work and it's not to say that because God provides for us. We don't work. He's provided the resources for us is provided to capability for us to work and to gain those things and if were in a situation where even at our best efforts we can't provide enough, God will find a way to take care of us to sustain us right they work and we work, but it's God who providentially provides Job 3841 says who prepares for the Raven. It's nourishment when it shown try to God and wonder about without food. The answer is the Almighty does the Almighty does and the psalmist emphasizes this is Psalm 104. This verse is two verses. There was 25. There is the sea great and broad and which are swarms without number.

Animals, both small and great verse 27. They all wait for the to give them their food in due season. If God didn't provide. If God had designed that food chain that they wouldn't survive what God wants him to survive. God made them for his own glory and I'll think about that when it comes to the sea. Most of what goes on in the sea. Nobody ever sees it's just for the sheer pleasure of God. In Psalm 145 verse 15 the eyes of all look to the goddess give them their food in due time that a store when I handed out to satisfy the desire of every living thing. Psalm 147 nine says he gives to the beast, its food into the young ravens, which cry Rabbi Simeon said in my life I've never seen a stag as a dryer of figs. I've never seen a lion as a porter. I've never seen a fox as a merchant, yet they're all nourished without worry if they who are created to serve me or nourished.

How much more odd.

I who am created to serve my maker to be nourished and that's really the point isn't it God feeds them. Verse 24 God feeds them. God has a purpose for their existence. There is a manifest honor that comes to him. There is a glory that comes to him. There is a delight that comes to him and so God feeds them is the same provision that he makes for them that he makes for us and look at the end of verse 24.

How much more valuable you are than the bird's if he sees to it that the birds have food. I think you'll see to it that you do. You don't need to spend your life worrying about whether you can have enough whether you have enough now whether you have enough when you retire with you have enough in the future your God promises to sustain you to the end of his purpose, and by the way, when that comes you want to leave anyway, right.

Thomas Watson said this life is like, and in you spend a couple of nights there, but you never forget where your home is Paul said it's nice to be here, but I would rather depart and be with Christ. But I have to be here for your sake. But he also knew when it was over and he said I've finished the course, I've kept the faith. I've run the race. I'm ready to go.

The time of my departure is at hand. And until that day. He knew how to be in abundance and how to be in little and God supplied all his needs because he always does that for his own. These are powerful arguments in these first two points.

Life is from God. He gives it he sustains it he makes provision for it.

I want to show you something by way of contrast. It's really interesting back to Haggai Haggai. That's three books into the Old Testament from the backside Malachi, Zechariah, Haggai.

This first chapter of Haggai says verse five the Lord says consider your ways consider your ways. You have sown much, but harvest little you eat, but there's not enough to be satisfied you drink, but there's not enough to become drunk you put on clothing, but no one is warm enough and he who earns, earns wages to put into a purse with holes does sound like provision. It's not thus says the Lord of host. Consider your ways. Take a look at yourself and ask why is it like this. Why do you not have enough food.

Why do you not enough drink. Why are you not able to have the close to keep yourself warm. Why is it that when you earn wages they disappear. Verse eight he says go to the mountains, bring some wood and rebuild the temple, there's the answer that forgotten whom God that I may be pleased with and glorified, says the Lord, you look for much you hold it comes to little and when you bring it home.

I blow it away. There's the issue why do I do that because of my house which lies desolate. While each of you runs to his own house while not taking care of my house.

Would you all take care of your house back in verse four he says it is it is it time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses while this house lies desolate. In verse 10 he says because of you. The sky has withheld its due and the earth has withheld its produce. I called for a drought on the land on the mountains, on the grain on the new wine on the oil on what the ground produces, on men on cattle and all the labor of your hands. God made it all go bad. While if he gave you life. He will sustain that life and he will provide all you need. If you continue to honor him right. The Lord's providence in the food supply is staggering is really it's the staggering the varieties just beyond belief. Abundant boundless self perpetuating renewable food supply.

There's more than enough potential for this planet to provide food for the whole world is there.

What about famine famine is nothing to do with the capability of this planet to produce. It has to do with false religion, such as in India where they feed grain to rats and cows. It has to do with war or social politics in Africa. It has to do with communism where they tell people not to work his way to protest against the people rule over them. Consequently, determine verdant fields into dust bowls as new laziness doesn't have to do with potential. The earth is still filled with food goddess created a boundless boundless supply and he provides it for his faithful people's why David said I've never seen the Lord's people begging bread if you belong to him.

He takes care of you until his work for you is finished. In Psalm 3410. They who seek the Lord shall not be in want of any good thing young lions, lack, and suffer hunger but not those who seek the Lord in Isaiah 3315 he who walks righteously speaks with sincerity rejects unjust gain so forth his bread will be given him. This water will be sure God is going to take care of his own children. So why worry about life's necessities worrying is a failure to understand divine priority and that is this the priority is that you're here is God's child to fulfill a divine purpose and he will sustain you until that and and it's a failure to understand divine provisions if he takes care of the animals who only in a nominal way. Give him glory. How much more is going to take care of you. Third point just introduce this worry is a failure to understand divine privilege.

Worry is a failure to understand divine privilege for the verse 25 just going introduce this this is very interesting which of you by being anxious can add a single cubit to his lifespan.

You know what a cubit is the measurement from the tip of your elbow to the tip of your fingers turns out to be about 18 inches. That's how they measured things in cubit's soul is it saying which of you by being anxious can add 18 inches to your height and who wants to go from 510 to 76. No point in that. And whoever thought you could do it by worrying now is not talking about that is using cubit simply as a metaphor for length and he's talking about the length of your life not your height and you simply saying do you think that by worrying you going to add to your lifespan.

This is a matter of divine privilege.

Let me tell you what this is.

You do not have the privilege to determine your lifespan who does the Lord gives Lord takes blessed be the name of the Lord people so all you know if you are you going to do this you gotta do that to live longer live look the society is the cirque about lengthening life. Make $1 billion industries and food supplements and vitamins and exercise medications on and on. You can't add one day to your life.

I want to be here any longer than he wants me here is, liberating as it takes the panic out people consumed with their health. None not saying you should be disciplined. You should not saying you shouldn't be moderate in the way you eat and I'm not saying you should stay in some reasonable condition so you can serve the Lord with all your energy and all your power. That's important though there's no virtue in the sin of gluttony or laziness or overindulgence, but I am telling you were using a length in your life because the one who has the privilege to determine when you were born. And when you die is the sovereign God.

So what you want to do the worry you belong to him.

He knows the priority is for you to serve him. He makes provision so that that priority can be fulfilled and to determine just exactly how long he wants that to go on, what's the worry on to say more about that next time, but for the moment deleted. There let's pray together, Lord, we do ask you to instill in us the conviction of these truths help us to understand how rich these promises are how wonderful they are, how joy full, they are how grateful we should be helpless to stop being anxious worrying being afraid because we know you care for us. Help us to trust in you and to be rich toward you, putting our treasure in heaven, holding lightly to earthly things. Doing those things with our resources that build your kingdom and showing the your kingdom is where our heart is placed, we thank you Lord for the fact that we can live free of anxiety free of stress and free of worry and fear. Because our lives are completely in your care. Fill us with joy and gratitude. This is grace to you with John MacArthur.

Thanks for being with us. John is Chancellor of the Masters University in seminary's current study is showing you the path to anxiety free living, you know Jon, I imagine some of our listeners heard what you said today about God's provision and their thinking, like I do look.

I truly believe the Lord meets my needs and yet sometimes, when trials come. It's hard to fight off that sense of anxiety.

So what's really happening in that situation is that some deficiency in my faith know it really is just the opposite.

Fill the times that come into our lives that are troublesome times are the times that we should especially be thankful. James said, count it all joy, not just some but all joy when you fall into various trials. Why because they have a perfecting work. Peter said that the Lord is going to make you perfect. When you go through trials, but for a while there going to trouble you really spiritual growth depends on trials.

It depends on trials and in so far as you respond correctly to them in the first thing to understand is you don't want to look at a trial. A difficult time a hard time as something negative you want look at that as a positive want to help you with that. This is something that's pretty normal for all of us to face challenges and anxieties and wondered why is the Lord doing this and maybe get on the downside of that, rather than the upside of seeing how God is using it to grow us in our spiritual strength and through the years we've had a tool that really helps people with that. It's a book called anxious for nothing, anxious for nothing, it takes you through the basic principles found in the Bible for defeating anxiety defeating worry will show you how to cultivate contentment. And that's huge in your life how to defeat anxiety that contain specific study questions specific prayer suggestions and most helpfully the list of Psalms for the anxious and through the years. I don't know, maybe hundreds of thousands of people have been helped by anxious for nothing, so we would love to have this book in your hands for yourself or for anybody else who might need some good biblical teaching as they go through a trial, anxious for nothing, affordably priced and not always available from Grace to you. That's right in front, one of God's most repeated commands in Scripture is fear not.

He knows you get afraid. But he's also equipped you with everything you need to overcome any fear anxious for nothing shows you how to tap into those resources in the trials you face. Order your copy today. Our number here 855 grace shop online@jidety.org again. The book anxious for nothing, provides biblical answers for worry and helpful study questions to reinforce what you're learning.

Also a list of Psalms for the anxious to help guide your prayer to get your copy of anxious for nothing, call 855 grace or go to our website Jide TY.org and as you enjoy these lessons. Remember that this broadcast is available in your area. Thanks to the support of listeners like you. When you stand with grace to you. You help bring clear biblical truth to believers around the world and the life transforming gospel to the lost. To make a donation, call 855 grace or make your tax-deductible gift to Grace to you, PO Box 4000, panorama city, CA 91412.

You can also express your support by clicking the donate button at the top of our website. Again, that's Jide TY.org now for John MacArthur and the entire race to use death.

I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for tuning in today and be here tomorrow when John shows you how to stop fear at its source to continue his series on anxiety free living with another half hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on grace to you