Sermon On The Mount

Worry and Fretfulness

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 13-25

Genre:

Track: 13

Dictation Name: Sermon on the Mount – 13

Location/Venue:

Year: 1980

Almighty God our Heavenly Father we come to Thee in the midst of the battle between humanism and Thy kingdom. We thank Thee our Father that we are members of an army that cannot be defeated, that this is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith. Make us therefore always zealous in battle, bold in terms of Thy calling and constant in our profession. Bless us now as we give ourselves to the study of Thy word, in Jesus’ name, Amen.

We have been studying the Sermon on the Mount and now we continue with the last portion of Matthew 6:24-34. Matthew 6:24-34. Our Lord here deals with the problem of anxiety, anxiety, of worry, of fretfulness.

“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

25 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?

26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?

27 Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?

28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?

31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

32 (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

Take no thought means in modern English ‘be not anxious’. This is an old phrase that perhaps has lost its meaning for us. It is not a prohibition of thinking, of being providential, of planning, it is enditement of anxiety. Be not anxious. Well as we look at the world today we can say there is a great deal to be anxious about. Consider the fact that in the world today we do have a food crisis. There have been four major food exporting countries in the world in recent years, Canada, the United States, Australia and Argentina. Draught and weather conditions have put three of them out of the world market this year leaving only the United States. This means our wheat is going to be under prime demand as well as all our other food stock. Then consider another fact, thus far this season we have had less rain then we did during the drought and if our capacity to produce food falters consider the implications of that. One might say there is a great deal to be anxious about but our Lord says be not anxious. Be not anxious. Why do we have the conditions that we do now? Worldwide there is a critical problem. We know from everything that the weather satellites tell us the weather this year has been disastrous, drought throughout the Soviet Union, Red China as well as in Africa, Latin America and elsewhere. The Chinese are already in the market for our wheat, there would seem that there a great deal of problems, a great deal about which to be anxious. And yet when we look at the Bible, Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 what we see is in terms of what God very carefully and specifically predicted.

That when men serve other masters they will pay the price, His judgment will be upon them. And when they persist in that he says the sky will be as a burning fire and the ground as brass, finally, and they will be able to produce no food because of His judgment. We are in a time of judgment, very definitely. But even in the face of all things and our Lord was speaking to a generation that was in a time of judgment, that was on the brink of drought, in Judea, in the Promised Land which culminated with the fall of Judea in the most disastrous single event in all of history, the fall of Jerusalem. The whole countryside was stripped of trees to make crosses for the leaders to crucify them when Jerusalem fell. Two million people died in that three year long siege. Not one stone was left standing upon another as our Lord predicted. Not only so but to make the place uninhabitable the Romans brought in salt and sowed it upon the fields so that nothing would grow on the site of Jerusalem. That was how intense their hatred was. To appreciate the significance of that fact you have to realize that salt in those days was expensive, it was not as readily produced as cheaply produced as it is today. So it took an intense hatred, a bitterness because of what that war had cost Rome. So, it was a time of trouble and it was no wonder that on palm Sunday as our Lord went into Jerusalem he wept over the city because he knew what was coming for it and yet our Lord says take no thought, be not anxious, why? Because all of this moves according to God’s purpose and plan and it is His judgment and if we are His it is our deliverance. No man can serve two masters. If you are serving the wrong master you are under judgment, you are in trouble, then you have something to be anxious about.

Anxiety is a murderous thing, nothing more poisons life then anxiety but our Lord is commanding us in the face of a world problem, a world conflict such as existed in His day and such as exists in our day to be not anxious. Take no thought for your life, what ye should eat or what ye should eat or yet for your body what ye shall put on. Why? If ye serve your master he’ll take care of you. Now some of us who are a little older, myself in particular, probably the oldest here can remember times that were very difficult, the depression and I can remember very vividly the stories told about the flight of my parents during the World Wars and during the Massacres when my uncle and aunt who were just a little older than I, four and five years old and they never realized what was happening around them, how people were dropping dead from hunger and famine on the march or from being shot and they played and my uncle would pull at his sister’s pigtails and they thought it was quite a lark to be on a horse together. Why? Because no matter how grievous the circumstances children do not fret, they are not anxious, anxiety is a complaint of older people, of mature people who are acting immaturely. They knew that if there were anything to eat they would be fed. Why? Because their mother and their aunts and uncles were there and their father had been killed would care for them. Did you ever worry about where your next meal would come from when you were a child or whether you would be clothed or not? No. You knew your parents loved you and would provide for you. Now, if we do not serve God we are going to be anxious. If we do not serve God in the confidence that He knows our problems better than we do and knows what is down the road better than we do we are going to be filled with anxiety.

“26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?”

If you are the Lords, isn’t He going to take better care of you then the world around us?

“Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?”

It has been rightfully said that one of the evils of anxiety is that we worry about things we can never change. That teenagers and college youth in particular when they begin entering the world of anxiety worry about things that cannot be changed, their aptitudes, their looks, their height or their lack of height and so on. They worry endlessly about things which are unchangeable and our anxiety is about things that are outside our control but are in God’s hands. So how can we by all our fretting add one cubit to our stature or change that which is not in our hands? So that when we are anxious we are distrusting God’s judgment.

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:

29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?”

Oh ye of little faith. Now the illustration our Lord uses there is very interesting, Solomon, the people he was talking to knew their bible, if you read about Solomon in Kings and Chronicles what do you find, he was very wealthy. He spent twenty years in the building of an armory, throne room, harem, palace, the palace for his Egyptian queen, a royal chapel, it was decorated with cedar, gold, bronze and ivory. He spent millions and then borrowed fifty million more and that was not a time of inflation by the way.

It took a lot to feed his household, do you know what the daily rations were for his court to feed them, that is, his household? Ten flat oxen or steers and twenty pasture fed steers, three hundred bushels of flour, six hundred bushels of meal, a hundred sheep plus we are told wild game such as deer, gazelles and roe bucks. Is it any wonder that we are told that when the queen of Sheba visited him and saw this it says literally in the Hebrew it took her breath away. Well it would, wouldn’t it? And our Lord says for the wild flowers of the field that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now the flowers of the field are used here by our Lord and used again elsewhere. In fact the flowers of the field represent a common imagery in scripture. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth but the word of the Lord endureth forever. The flowers of the field are again and again given to us as a symbol that life is short, that it is brief, but also that it is beautiful. Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But also that life is under providence, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Not a sparrow falls but your heavenly father knoweth these things. So what our Lord is telling us here and throughout His word that yes, life is short but it is beautiful, it is under providence and God provides not only for necessity but for beauty and the world is a witness to that fact. That which destroys life is sin, another master. No man can serve two masters and so He is calling us to have no longer a divided heart but to take hands of our lives and to trust them to God, to be indeed the children of our father that is in heaven. Those things which our responsibility we are to do but beyond that we have to trust in Him and to be not anxious.

My favorite story is one that a Danish theologian of a generation ago told about old Mary who lived out in the country and would trudge to town to do her shopping and carry the sack of groceries home. This is her custom, once a week, and on this one occasion one of the neighbors happened to be along with his horse and wagon when Mary was on her way home and he offered her a ride which she gratefully accepted. But when she got up in the wagon next to him she kept holding the bag on her shoulders and it was heavy and he told her put it down behind you, take a load of your back and she said oh when the horses are working so hard and extra to pull me the least I can do is to carry my own load. Well, I think that’s an excellent illustration of way we are, the Lord has taken over our lives but we are going to carry our own burdens in his wagon as though we were making some kind of contribution. But what we are doing is to sin. Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things but

“…for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”

There is a motto that I saw once some years ago on someone’s wall which has always delighted me and it was this: why pray when you can worry. And I think that’s the motto of all too many Christians, why pray when you can worry. By the way I saw another one recently why extraneous to what I am saying is still good and this sign in someone’s study was: for God so loved the world that He did not send a committee. [Laughter] Why pray when you can worry. Our Lord is saying the choice is yours, be not anxious. Now He’s not saying to us don’t do anything, we are to do our duty day by day, the duty is ours, the results are His to determine.

We are summoned to cease from our fretfulness. Over and over again the scriptures stress this fact of being ready to commit everything to the Lord and we are told, for example, by the Psalmist:

“O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him. O fear the LORD, ye his saints: for there is no want to them that fear him. The young lions do lack, and suffer hunger: but they that seek the LORD shall not want any good thing.”

The righteous cry and the Lord heareth and delivereth them out of all their troubles. At the conclusion of John’s gospel there is a very interesting episode with the crucifixion. Although our Lord had predicted his death and resurrection the disciples fell apart. Our Lord appeared to them again and again and they were still troubled so when He appeared to them by the shore of Galilee where because they were so upset they finally said well let’s go fishing, we’re sitting here fretting, we’re sitting here anxious, we’re troubled, let’s go fishing at least we’ll be doing something and they fished all night and towards morning they looked and there He was on the shore with a little fire and He told them where to catch some fish and they came ashore. Do you remember what He called them? Children, children. Now these were grown men, married men. We have a reference to Peter’s wife, for example because she was ill at one point and our Lord healed her and He called them children because as very God of very God He wants us to approach Him with all the confidence of children. Casting our every care upon Him for He careth for us. Let us pray.

Almighty God our Heavenly Father we come to Thee acknowledging that too often our lives are filled with anxiety but like old Mary we will not take hands of our lives and commit them into Thy keeping. Give us grace our Father to come to Thee as children in trust, in faith, in the knowledge of Thy omnipotence and having given Thine only begotten Son to die for us it is no great task for Thee to care for us now. We Thank Thee our Father that the government is upon Thy shoulders. Forgive us that so often we try to take the government upon our shoulders and in our ignorance and sin presume that which is forbidden to us. And so we come our Father casting our every care upon Thee who carest for us. In Jesus’ name, Amen. Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] That’s a good question, we have a great many translations coming out today, there are new ones every year. Frankly I have no respect for the motives of most of these translations. What we need to realize is that the bible being the best seller in the world offers a tremendous market if you can get a copyright on a bible.

And the King James Version is uncopyrighted , totally uncopyrighted, that’s why it’s the best bargain in the world, anyone can publish it and the number of people who publish bibles, the number of publishers is legion. Well in order to compete they have to give you a tremendous bargain, this one that I have for example is on paper that will be here a few centuries from now, it is with leather binding, very carefully sewn, the proof reading in a bible is equal to none other, have you ever noticed a typo in a bible? It’s the most carefully proofread book in the world. So the amount of money made per bible is small on a non-copyrighted bible even though many are in the market because it’s a best seller, you are sure of selling them. So you have everybody rushing out to get copyrighted bibles which are supposedly superior and the idea is this is something that can support our organization, our interchurch council or whatever it is for years to come and of course this is what it does. Now how are you going to sell translations, you look not for fidelity, they are not translations they are paraphrases, really. The King James is a translation, because it is a translation as you have noticed some of the words in your text are in italics indicate that it is supplied, it is not there literally but it is understood in the form of the noun or the verb, for example, when we use the imperative form in English, shut the door. Where’s the noun, well the noun you is understood, it is in the verb form when you take the imperative. Well, because they follow the language so literally here they make a point of that but the paraphrase will give the translators understanding. Now a paraphrase is sometimes a help because it brings out an idiomatic meaning but very often it puts a different interpretation on it. Now if you are out to produce a bible that is going to be a money maker for your organization no matter how well intentioned you may be one of the things that will help sell that translation is novelty. A dramatically different reading, you see, so that supposedly you’ve found meanings that were obscured and unknown by others.

As a result there is a premium, a premium on novel readings. Hence fidelity is not as important. Now, when you read the text there that translation is important to you, meek, but it does mean disciplined, broken to harness. Because your concern there is to be what God wants you to be. But the scholars are not interested in that, primarily, do you understand what I am saying, there is a different in motive.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] I don’t know, yes, I don’t know. I don’t know. And it’s not that it is not known, you can go back say a century and a half ago in mid-eighteen hundreds and I’ve seen more than one sermon of the day speak of meek as being disciplined, possibly that meaning will return again, that’s the interesting thing obsolete meanings don’t stay obsolete. As people become more concerned with the purity of language those meanings return. What we’re going to see, for example, with the Christian school movement that as people become more concerned with sound education meanings will return, thus, Shakespeare is no longer taught in high school and there are no required courses in most colleges and universities for students where you do get Shakespeare, you have to be an English major to get Shakespeare. Well I can recall having Shakespeare in grade school, you see. Now, why is that important, I also had Milton. As you read those older writers you encounter older meanings, it revitalizes your knowledge of the English language. It takes you back to the pure meaning but when you have a generation as you have now that does not have the knowledge of our language as it was a hundred, two hundred, three hundred years ago meanings are obscured and the language becomes progressively cheaper.

This creates a problem. I would suspect many of the translators are not even aware of some of the root meanings because I doubt that they go to a Greek lexicon and study the history of these words every time they read it and that’s what you have to do.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] No, not quite, there is a very interesting point, I’m glad you raised that question. What we are told in the commandment is thou shalt not kill, in other words man cannot take life, God only can. But man can be empowered by God to do it, thus we cannot take another man’s life unless it is in self-defense, the bible tells us that we can, and it specifies the conditions that we can, in our self-defense, kill someone. It also tells us that when a man has committed certain crimes it is mandatory for the social order, the civil government to take his life. That’s not murder it is God doing it. God delegating us to do it. It tells us that we are empowered to take the lives of certain animals and to clear them of an area and so on, in other words, all life is under God’s government and no life can be taken apart from God, so it is not killing to take a life of a condemned man. That is simply the enforcement of God’s law. So Thou shalt not kill means you have not the right to take life on your terms, only on God’s terms.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes. As a matter of fact you see because we held to that we had it written into our constitution, the constitution specifies only three conditions whereby you can call up a militia, which is the old term for a drafted army. To repel invasion, suppress insurrection and enforce the laws of the union and we abided by that up until World War 1 and we then deliberately overruled the Constitution, Wilson did.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes, we are told that God is not a man, that He is spirit. We are also told in several texts and I’ll jot them down for you so you can look up those texts what the image of God is, Paul refers to them. It is knowledge, righteousness, holiness and dominion. Those are specified as those communicable aspects of God’s image which make up man so that’s what the image of God in man is, knowledge, righteousness, holiness and dominion.

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] At one time when the catechism was used in Sunday Schools and in weekday schools everyone was reared knowing what the image of God was because it was taught there, the catechism is a summary of what the Bible teaches. The shorter catechism begins what is man’s chief end? The chief end of man is glorify God and enjoy Him forever, what is sin? Sin is any want of conformity unto or violation of God’s law and so on and on. That way we learned these things, now that’s gone, you see, our education is sadly lacking in that area as well as in others.

I may have a copy to spare of the catechism in which case I’ll give it to you. Well our food is just about ready so we will adjourn for now.