Sermon On The Mount

Anxiety

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Conversations, Panels and Sermons

Lesson: 14-25

Genre:

Track: 14

Dictation Name: Sermon on the Mount – 14

Location/Venue:

Year: 1980

Almighty God our Heavenly Father we come to thee casting our every care upon Thee who carest for us. Defend us oh Lord against the humanistic statists, deliver our country from the hands of ungodly men, shake up Thy church oh Lord, arouse Thy church out of the stagnation of self-interest, of pietism and of living at ease in Babylon and make of it again a mighty army that will work for the glory of Thy kingdom and to cast down all evil imaginations and powers on the part of Thine enemies. Bless us now as we give ourselves to the study of Thy word, in Jesus ‘ name, Amen.

We have been in this series of studies going through the Sermon on the Mount. We went through rather generally and now we are going through more specifically sometimes concentrating on a single word or sentence. This morning we shall deal with an entire passage that we dealt with previously from Matthew 6:25-34. Now this passage can be considered from several perspectives, there is so much here, from the standpoint of what it means to trust in the Lord, from the standpoint of double mindedness and serving two masters of which verse twenty four speaks, and many, many more perspectives. This morning our perspective is and our subject: Anxiety. Let us read now Matthew 6:25-34.

“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.”

One of man’s basic problems is his trust in his own thinking. God’s word is the creative word. When God speaks it is done, when God said let there be, the whole of creation came into being on six successive days. God is only to declare the word and it is, whatever He decrees and man in his sin dreams of having a creative word, but it is always a dream word, never real. But it has been the hope of man and the hope of man’s philosophy that somehow man’s word would become the binding word in reality. We have this set forth in philosophical form in modern philosophy, especially since Emmanuel Kant. We have it stated in capsule form by Hagel, Hagel is the father, of course, of Marxism, of democracy, of pragmatism, of fascism, of virtually every form of political thought in the modern world. Hagel summed it up those, the rational is the real. What the mind of philosophical man, autonomous man as he thinks logically conceives of as being real is therefore reality. Now that is the essence of witchcraft. As I will so must it be and of course that is the creed of freemasonry, as I will so must it be. The whole world has been haunted by that dream of man playing god, of issuing a creative word and saying this is the way then reality must be. This is Marxism. Marxism says this is the nature of reality and therefore reality must automatically fall into line. As soon as Marxism achieves its goal, how insane that goal is we can see from Marx’s writings of what will happen when man attains the full communist utopia.

Marx actually says that when that time comes a man can in the morning be a brain surgeon, in the afternoon a cattleman and in the evening a concert violinist, whatever he wills shall be. The rational is the real and man should be everything he imagines himself to be because his word must be the creative word. But of course it’s not Marxism only but all of modern politics that is haunted by that dream, the dream of playing God and saying I conceive of this to be reality and therefore it must be reality. Just think of Congress and the laws it passes, those laws are Hegelian in principle in that they say this is the rational and therefore it must be the real. This will solve our problems of welfare and eliminate them only they have increased. This will solve our problems of education, of racial bigotry, of every problem under the sun only the problems are intensified because man dream that his creative word can solve all things and this is why the Christian must in all his being be against the modern state. Not only because it is humanistic but because its humanism manifests the ultimate evil, the tempter’s program, that man by his creative word enacted into law can alter reality and every time a city council or state legislator or the federal government or any civil government in the world today meets they play god. They are Hegelians in their thinking they have their family quarrels and wars but they are all Hegelians and they believe that man has a creative word. All modern politics, all modern revolutions, at any and every end of the political spectrum from left to right and virtually all laws in the modern world are based upon that premise. Now our Lord is striking at this.

He says that we do the same, we feel if we worry enough we will overcome our problems. If I spend enough time worrying and fretting I will change reality. Now in verse twenty four which we did not read our Lord makes a contrast:

“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.”

Now mammon is wealth. It can also be translated as property, possession, that which I regard as mine own. Our Lord here contrasts two rival gods, but then He goes on to make clear that mammon, wealth, property, possessions, whatever it may be, is self-trust. It’s trusting in what we control, when it is mammon whom you serve if you are saying I am serving myself because I control my possessions. Therefore I will trust in them, meaning in myself. Trust in mammon is thus a form of self-trust and it marks all classes whether they be rich or poor. Men because they are fallen, because they have submitted to the basic temptation, ye shall be as gods, every man his own god knowing, determining for yourself what constitutes good and evil then you are your own god, then you will trust in yourself and you will have that companion of all self-trust, anxiety. Anxiety. If you trust in yourself you’ve got something to worry about because everything depends on you and how then are you going to sleep? People who are plagued with anxiety are also plagued with insomnia, what’s going to happen to the world if you fall asleep? Who is going to look after all your problems and all your concerns and the whole of creation if you put your head down on the pillow and drop off to sleep. The government, you see, is upon your shoulders if Satan is right and that leads to anxiety.

The world of Darwin has been a world of anxiety, an evolutionary world has no providence, no government by God. It is a world of the survival of the fittest. As I pointed out in one or another of my books some years ago sadism was a logical development of the doctrine of evolution. After all, before Darwin the government was upon God’s shoulders but if Darwin is right and the universe is not a world of providence and of harmony of interests but a world of conflicts, the survival of the fittest, a world of chance, then man has to take charge through the state and totalitarianism is an inevitable outcome of the doctrine of evolution. There will be no turning around of the trend toward totalitarianism without eliminating the doctrine of evolution. Ideas have consequences and the idea of evolution necessitates totalitarianism. The government has to be somewhere and if it isn’t in God and if it isn’t in the universe it has to be in man, in the state, and the world of Darwin thus becomes a world in which the government is upon man’s shoulders and man is plagued by anxiety. How does our Lord deal with this problem? He says:

“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?”

Our Father is mindful of the whole of His creation, of the birds, of the wildflowers, of every atom in all creation. If the Lord is concerned about the little things how much more so of His image bearers?

Are ye not much better than they? But our Lord does not stop there. He speaks of them as oh ye of little faith, He is talking to His disciples. He is talking to us, of little faith indeed, but His disciples with some faith, after all, and so he says be not anxious, take no thought. Can he who has done so much for us nto take care of the little things? Or as the Puritan poet said: he that could do so much for you will do yet more and care for you. Christ who gave His life for us has no problem in taking care of the details of our life. We are called to be dominion men, not flowers. We are to surrender anxiety for trust and enter into the harmony of His government. Consider the lilies of the field, our Lord says.

“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?”

The lilies of the field. Scholars have debated as to which of two varieties of wildflowers this might be, the argument is an interesting one because there are two varieties in Palestine that were probably called lilies. Now we’re not interested which is which and we can leave that to the specialists in the field but the interesting thing about them is that both these wildflowers have a remarkable complexity, like some of the wildflowers that we have been enjoying here in recent weeks, or like those that are in the central vase right here on this table and have been there now for I think about a week and a half and are still fresh.

The complexity of the wildflowers is amazing, when Dorothy and I walked over the fields here a week or so ago and looked at a number of the varieties, some very, very small, so small that you have to be near them to observe them and yet so complex. The delicacy of the arrangement, the convoluted folds of the blossom, the amazing design that goes into those flowers. And what our Lord is saying when He says consider the lilies of the field, when God has put so much design and purpose and beauty into something so small that sometimes you have to look down, bend over to see the delicacy, the smallness of them and yet the glory that is there. How much more so has God lavished design and purpose on our lives? This is the folly of anxiety. Can we do better with our lives then God can do? God who has done so much even for the simplest of wildflowers that flourishes in the spring and is here for a time and then goes and yet has made us His dominion men, a little lower than the angels or literally it reads a little lower than gods. Anxiety doubts all this. Anxiety puts a trust in our government, in our rule and so we are called to surrender anxiety for trust. Trusting in the Lord means more than an expression of words or emotions, our Lord tells us and defines it for us in these words:

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

All these material concerns shall be added unto you. Seek ye the first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Righteousness is the old fashioned word which we have as justice. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His justice, His law, His every word that proceeds out of His mouth. Instead of anxiety seek and it shall be added unto you.

Anxiety cannot add a cubit to our stature nor a minute to the span of our life and then our Lord concludes thus in words that have been very much misunderstood and are often interpreted by preachers as though it represents a kind of acceptance of the prevalence of evil.

“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.”

That last sentence is regularly misread. What does our Lord mean by it? Why He means that you have enough problems with today. Problems which by my grace and my providence you shall overcome. Why add to the evils with anxiety, that’s the point. Anxiety is an evil, why add to the evils of the day with this crowning evil, anxiety. Instead of solving the problems it compounds them. It involves a distrust in God and it is an insistence we can better protect our own interests then can the almighty Himself. Therefore, be not anxious. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we come before Thee confessing indeed that we are often anxious, that often we torment ourselves with anxieties and instead of coming to Thee to cast our every care upon Thee who carest for us. Give us grace to take hands of our lives, to commit them into Thy care and to put our whole heart, mind and being to faithfulness, to obedience to Thine every word. Bless us to this purpose we beseech Thee, In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Any questions now, first of all on our lesson?

Let me just throw out this sentence which I don’t know why is not more commonly used or published or preached: it’s an old line and it’s a very, very good one. It’s a question: “Why pray when you can worry?” [Laughter] Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] When you start worrying, start praying that is the simple solution. And when you pray first of all start out by confessing that you are a sinner because that’s what you are when you start worrying. It doesn’t do to pray and ask God to bless your worrying [laughs] and I’m afraid that’s what we sometimes do, we act as though our worrying is a virtue, it proves how sensitive we are, we are super holy because look Lord, see how many things we worry about, that demonstrates that we havea delicate nature. So we make a virtue out of our sins. Yes?

[Question Unintelligible]

[Rushdoony] Yes it is and it involves placing ourselves on a lofty level as though the answer were in us and the government were on our shoulders. Now there is a difference between godly planning and anxiety. We are commanded in scripture to be provident and proverbs has a great deal to say on providence but anxiety is something radically different.

Anxiety tends to be improvident, you see anxiety denies providence whereas providence in a man means working with the providence of God. Doing those things which conform to His word and knowing that this is what God and His providence blesses. Well if there are no further questions we will meet again in two weeks. We’ll be back to our every other week schedule.