Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ + Amen.
Adam and Eve had sinned. In the face of God, they were confronted with their guilt and shame over eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. God dealt out punishment. They would be banished from the Garden of Eden. They would now grow old, get sick, and die. There would be pain in childbearing and toil on the earth. Bad news abounded. Consider their hearts, confronted with all this despair and bad news, thrown out of paradise. Wouldn’t you have been anxious?
Noah and his family lived as the last true believers in the LORD upon the earth. God had found displeasure in his creation’s wickedness and told Noah that He would purge the world of evil through a flood. Noah was told by God to build an ark, to take upon this ark his family and all the creatures of the world so that they would be preserved through the devastation. When this ark was built, Noah, his family, and all the animals entered into it. And God shut the door. For forty days and nights the rains came down and the waters of the deep sprang up. They waited… and waited… and waited… imagine yourself in their shoes. What doubts and anxieties would hang on your heart?
Abraham, who had waited a hundred years for an heir, was given a command by God: Abraham was to take his son, Isaac, whom he had trusted the Lord to give to him for years, and sacrifice him to the Lord upon Mount Moriah. Abraham took the trek up the mountain with his son while having to bear the weight of knowing what was to come. Can you imagine how he felt for those long hours?
Moses was sent by God to confront the Pharaoh, one of the most powerful men in the world, to demand the freedom of God’s people. Jonah the Prophet was swallowed by a great fish and kept inside for three days and nights. Daniel was thrown into a lion’s den. God’s people of Israel were carried off into captivity into Assyria and Babylon. All of these people whose stories are found in the scriptures were faced with tremendous hardship. All of them faced challenge, uncertainty, and likely felt a great deal of anxiety about what was set before them.
In our modern day we are facing an anxiety epidemic. According to the World Health Organization, around 4% of the population of our planet has been diagnosed with some sort of anxiety disorder. That’s around Three-Hundred and Twenty Million people. This statistic only even accounts for the people who have a definable, diagnosed disorder. I think you would be hard pressed to find a person on earth who hasn’t experienced anxiety in their lives. Even so, that level of anxiety is growing. With a steady flow of all recorded information in human history in the palms of our hands, technology has made us aware of anxiety-inducing things we would never have known about in previous ages. Our twenty-four hour news cycle gives us constant updates of the most recent thing we should be anxious about. A global pandemic that forced us to separate from one another created isolation and social anxiety in ways that most people have never seen before. We live in an anxious world.
And we are anxious people. Whether or not you “have anxiety” specifically, it’s difficult to avoid it. In times of economic struggle in our country, we clutch our wallets a little tighter, we worry about the price of common household items. We feel anxiety over our political climate, as differing political opinions split further apart and every four years we are told we face the “most important election in the history of Democracy.” Anxiety can often feel like a force of nature in our lives, something that just is there and can’t be done anything about. Too often, we give in. We let it control our lives, even without knowing it. We often think things like “if I just had enough money…” “If I just find the right job or the right partner” “If I just exercise enough and take the right supplements” “THEN my life will be less anxious.” We can easily fall into the trap of our purpose in life becoming an endless search for ways to make us less anxious.
Dear friends in Christ, this is something we must repent of. This anxiety we have about the things of this world clouds our hearts and minds, drawing us away from where our eyes should truly be set. When the Lord Jesus says “do not be anxious about your life,” it is not only a command of the Law, telling you what you should not be doing. It is also a gift, bidding you to come to Him in faith. Your anxieties do not need to control your life because Christ offers you something better: He offers you Himself and His Promises. We are called by our Lord Jesus to not be anxious, but to put our hope in our heavenly treasure: the inheritance we receive through Jesus Christ.
Adam and Eve, naked and ashamed, were given clothing by God, but more importantly, they were given a promise: God would send a savior to fix what they had broken. Yes, they would die, but God was sending one who would overcome that death and restore all that had been lost. God made promises to Adam and Eve, and they had faith in His promises. Noah and his family lived on the ark for over a year, waiting for the Lord to deliver them, but He had promised to do so, and when all was finished, the doors of the ark were opened and God made the covenant with Noah that He would never again flood the world. God made promises to Noah and his family, and they had faith in His promises. Abraham had been promised an heir, a son, even in his old age, and God promised him a great nation. Even as God told Abraham to sacrifice his son, Abraham believed in God’s promises, believing He would raise Isaac from the dead. In His mercy, God did not require Abraham to go through with the sacrifice, seeing Abraham’s faith. God made Abraham promises, and even in the darkest moments, Abraham had faith in God’s promises. Moses had been promised by God that His people would be delivered. He promised that even though Moses did not believe he was able to be the voice for God, God would still use Moses to achieve this work. God made Moses promises, and Moses had faith in these promises. Jonah, Daniel, and even the whole people of Israel found themselves in situations where all could have been seen as lost, but God had made promises to His people, promises to bless and preserve them, and those who truly believed in the Lord and did not fall away to false gods had faith in the Lord’s promises.
Throughout the history of God’s people, and even now among us, the treasure of the faith and hope that we receive from the Lord is given to sustain us through all trials and tribulations, and to lead us to rest at the feet of Jesus. More often than not, the things in our lives that bring us anxiety remain around us and can continue to tempt us away from trust in the Lord. We are tempted to place our hope in the things we feel we can control, like our earthly possessions or our plans for our lives. The things that attack us, disturb us, and cause us anxiety are used by Satan to drive us away from Christ and toward despair. This side of eternity we will have these things testing us, but we suffer through them all in the name of Jesus. Just as Adam, Noah, Abraham, and all the great saints of old, who pressed on in the face of great struggles and things that cause anxiety, we are only able to do so because of faith. Faith in God’s good promises, in His Son’s death and resurrection, in the forgiveness that He gives to us and the salvation that He has won for us, this is our true treasure. God promises to you that through all the things that may cause us anxiety and drive us to despair, He still remains. Christ has won redemption for you, sealed you with His name in baptism, and declared you to be His own.
Our Lord in His mercy has provided us with the medicine for the sickness of our sinful anxiety, the thing that brings us through it all: the gift of faith in Himself. God’s promises are true, and the Holy Spirit brings us to have faith in them. And since God’s promises are true, then politics, economic turmoil, sickness of body or mind, broken relationships, war, whatever the thing is that brings you anxiety, it does not have any lasting power over you. We are called to leave behind these anxieties to turn our attention to the Lord, to His gracious giving and His eternal promises. So do not be anxious, for the battle is won. Do not be anxious, for your God loves you. Do not be anxious, for Christ died and rose for you. Do not be anxious, for your treasure is stored up in heaven, and nothing can take it away from you.
In the Holy name of Jesus + Amen.