Fear of Missing Out - Part 2
Message Description
Dr. Kurt Bjorklund continues the FOMO message series teaching from the New Testament book of Matthew discussing fears we experience when we decide to trust God instead of trusting ourselves.
Message Transcription
Good morning. Last week we began a series that we called Fear of Missing Out. And technically, the fear of missing out is something that is endemic to kind of a current culture where we say, "I'm afraid I'm going to miss out on something, so I'm going to push myself to do all kinds of things in order to never be the person who didn't experience something that I thought would have been good." And as I was thinking about that, I was thinking about just the fears that so many of us live with and what we wanted to do in these weeks was compare how Jesus uses the phrase, the kingdom of God, with the kingdom of this world and our fear of not having enough of something in the world in which we live, versus what Jesus says about the kingdom of God. And here's what I know is true of most of us, no matter how we portray ourselves or think of ourselves, there are some fears that we have in this world.
They're different for all of us, but all of us have some things that we say, "This is my concern. This is what leaves me with some anxiety, some fear in this world as I go through my life and my day-to-day existence." And today we're going to look at Matthew chapter six, verse 25 through 34. And this is something that we looked at last fall when we were working our way through the Sermon on the Mount. We don't normally repeat passages this quickly, but as I was looking at fear in the kingdom of God, this was one of those passages that was unavoidable because this is one of the iconic statements of Jesus, "Seek first his kingdom, and all these things will be added unto you." Seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and then all of these things will be added unto you.
And so, we wanted to talk about this today. So, some things, if you were around in the fall may be a repetition for you, but here's what I'd like to do to start. And that is, I'd like to talk about the two fears that I think Jesus addresses here. And I believe these fears will cover most of us in one way or another. Here's the first fear. And this is where Jesus speaks about the birds. And I'm going to say that this is the fear that I won't have enough. And the reason I say this is because when you look at verse 26 and 27, it says, "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. And are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying, add a single hour to your life?"
And this is Jesus just simply addressing the idea of people saying, "I don't have enough." Because he says, "First, listen, don't worry about your life. Don't be anxious about what you'll eat or anything in your life." And then he says, "Look at the birds. Here's my object lesson. Look at the birds. They don't sow, they don't put it in barns. They don't have a 401(k). They don't have real estate investments. They don't have all this stuff that you think gives you security. And yet your heavenly Father makes sure that they have enough." And some of us have the fear of not having enough.
Now I know enough of you personally, to know that you have very different experiences with this. Some of you have more than you know what to do with. And you don't really have a fear of not having enough when it comes to your finances. And some of us who are here are on the other end of the spectrum. We're wondering how next month we're going to make ends meet. And so, you may say, "Well, this doesn't apply to me." Or "This is exactly where I'm living." But that got me to thinking about something that maybe you learned in high school or early college. And this is what's called Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
Have you seen this? You've probably seen this somewhere. Maslow's hierarchy of needs starts at the bottom. It's this pyramid, I think we have a picture of it here. You may not be able to see that perfectly, but you can Google it and find it or DuckDuckGo it if you don't want to be tracked, but biological and psychological needs are at the bottom. And this is our need for food and sleep and water. In other words, until those needs are met, none of the higher needs make a whole lot of difference to us. And then there's the second level, which is still part of our basic needs, the needs for safety and security and health and finances.
In other words, once we say, "Okay, I have something to eat today." Then we start to say, "Do I have somewhere to live? Do I have enough to live for a while?" And then what Maslow kind of says is that then we start to move into higher level of needs, the need for love and belonging. In other words, this is where we start to say, "I want friendship, intimacy, family connections." And that this is part of our broader psychological needs. And then just above that is our need for esteem, to be respected, to have status, recognition, strength.
And then at the very top of his pyramid is the idea of our self-fulfillment needs or self-actualization, which is meeting all of, kind of our hierarchy of needs. Now, the reason I point this out is you may be here saying, "I am not concerned that I'll have enough when it comes to food, water, or security or a house or money."
But my guess is that there is something in your life where you say, "I am concerned about whether or not I'll have enough of this. Will I have enough energy and time to invest in my children the way that I want to, or will my work be so demanding that I won't be able to? Will I be able to care for my aging parents? Will I be able to win back the heart of my spouse who's been indifferent to me for years and I know it? Will I be able to have enough to finish this career when I feel totally depleted and empty right now?"
Do you see how, even if you say, "I have the money that I need," you still have needs. And I think this leads to the second fear that's in this text. And this is the fear that I'm going to say is that "I won't be enough." And I say this because after Jesus points to the birds, what he does is he points to the flowers of the field. And we see this in verse 28 through 30 and says, "And don't worry about your clothes. See how the flowers of the field grow? They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all of his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you? You of little faith."
Now, what was happening evidently in that culture was when people wanted to show how important they are, what they would do is they would get really nice garments and they would put them on so that everyone would know that they were important because they had expensive clothes. And what I said, when I taught about this last fall is, can you imagine that there was ever a culture that was so shallow? You see, we clothe ourselves sometimes with literal clothes, in order to hide maybe a little bit of insecurity inside of us that says, "I'm not actually enough, but I want you to see that I look good." And by the way, this isn't just a reference to expensive clothes.
I mean, sometimes we'll do stuff like, "Hey, it's a Patagonia. It really is greater than anything else." And yet what we really want is everyone to know that we're wearing something that's cool and expensive because somehow that makes us feel good. But even if you don't do it with expensive clothes, you have a getup and your getup might be, "I'm so cool that I don't care what anybody else thinks. And I shop at Goodwill." That's also a getup, in case you were wondering, of a way to say, "Look at how I process." And it isn't just literal clothes. Sometimes we do all kinds of things to cover our feeling of saying, "I want to be important." And what Jesus does is he says, "You're worried about having enough. Look at the birds, they're completely covered. And you're worried about being enough, that's why you try to clothe yourself with all of these ways of saying, 'Look at me.'"
And he says, "But I want you to know that you don't need to worry about all of these things." And here's probably what's true again for many of us. And that is, even if we have enough of kind of the base level of needs, we have a deep desire to be loved, to be esteem, to be respected, to be seen as being competent in what we do. And so, Jesus comes, and he addresses these fears and here's what he says, in verse 25 he says, "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you'll eat, what you'll drink. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothes?"
And then he says this, verse 32 and 33, he says, "For pagans run after all these things and your heavenly Father knows that you need them." Now, the word here, pagan, is not used negatively or pejoratively. This is Jesus saying, "The people who don't believe in God." That's what he means when he's talking about pagans, he's saying, "So this is people's whole rubric in the world who don't have faith in God. They live their whole life saying, 'Will I have enough? Will I be enough?'" In other words, the question that drives them day after day after day is, "Will I have enough? Will I be enough?" And then Jesus says this, he says, "Your heavenly Father knows that you need them." And then this iconic line, "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well." All these things will be given to you as well.
So, here's how this works, what happens is you start with worry or fear that says, "I won't have enough. I won't be enough." And what happens then is we start to run after the things that we think we need in order to have enough or be enough. In other words, we make them our priority, our obsession. So, wherever we fit on this continuum, if we say, "I need to be a good athlete. I need to be great at music. I need to be a great student. I need to have a good job. I need to live in a certain kind of house. I need my kids to behave a certain way. I need to retire early. I need to drive a certain kind of a car." Whatever it is, or "I need to know that my health is good or that I can still compete at a high level or that I'm loved, or that my family..."
And we start to say, "This is my priority. This is everything that I'm going to live about." Now notice they're good things, but what happens here is we're starting to say, "This is what I'm basing my life on. This is what I'm all about." And what happens when you do that... Jesus' words, the pagans run after these things, is we start to say, "I don't care about the kingdom of God. I just care about my kingdom. And if God can help me get what I think I need, then God is good. But if he doesn't help me get what I think I need, then I'm not so sure I need this God."
Now we introduced the idea of kingdom last week. It's not a word that we use all the time. And the way that we talked about it is if you've ever seen one of these kids' movies or shows where a king or a queen is able to say, "This whole kingdom is the way that I want it to be." That's the idea of kingdom. And so, the kingdom of God is how God wants things to be. And what happens for us as people is, if we neglect the kingdom of God, it means that we're prioritizing how we want things to be rather than how God wants things to be. Because we're saying, "What I need is this more than anything else." And however, we define it.
Now, I was talking with a friend of mine the other day, and he had been to San Francisco recently and he said, "San Francisco has completely changed as a city in the last year." He said, "All the people have kind of gone remote work. And there's almost nobody in downtown. Businesses are boarded up because of some of the public initiatives that have gone on." And he said, "Literally, when I was walking downtown..." He said, "I saw more rats than people." And he said, "It's become the kingdom of rats." He didn't use that word, I'm inserting that. But what happens is, one kingdom will win over the other. Now San Francisco will come back. People will return to downtown, and the rats will go back to the holes from which they came.
But if you don't attend to the kingdom of God, what happens is your own kingdom gets big. And if you attend to your kingdom to the exclusion of the kingdom of God, then that kingdom will get good. And what happens is if we run after all these things, then we're left on our own in which God says, "You know what? It's kind of like San Francisco, it's been abandoned to you to run your kingdom and to get what it is that you think you need on your own, in your own way."
Now, the truth is, some of us will do that and have done that and have done it pretty well. Some of us gathered in this room, online, Butler, the Strip District, have been able to say, "I'm all about my kingdom. Not about God's kingdom. I hope God helps me, but you know what? I do what I want to do, and I have enough, and I feel like I am enough. I don't feel like I have any of these fears." And this is not, by the way, in the text, this is not a threat to say if you don't seek God's kingdom, God's going to smush your life. But it's a promise of God saying, "If you seek my kingdom first and my righteousness, then the fears that you have of not having enough or being enough, I will take responsibility for it."
That's what this is. In other words, the way that this is set up is it's saying, "If you seek my kingdom, then you don't have to worry about what it is that will happen in your life because God says, 'I will add all these things into your life.'" That's what that's talking about. Now, I said that this is a promise, but this raises a question. It says here, verse 33, "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well." It would be easy at this point, just to kind of talk about this to say something like, "Listen, God's got this and let's just celebrate that God's got this, whoop, whoop, God's got this, here we go, kind of a thing."
But here's what you know, and that is that there are people who, from your perspective and my perspective, have sought the kingdom of God and it seems like maybe they didn't have enough. Maybe they were somehow let down. So how do you reconcile that? In Psalm 37 verse 25, the Psalmist says, "I was young and now I'm old and I've never seen the righteous forsaken, I've never seen them begging for bread," is what that says.
In Psalm 91, which is one of the sweeping kind of declarations of God's goodness. Here's what we read, and I want to just read a few of these verses, because I think they're especially pointed for the day in which we live. Says, "Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty." So again, this statement of if you trust yourself to God, then God will be the one where you can rest. "I will say to the Lord, 'He's my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.' Surely he will save you from the Fowler's snare and from deadly pestilence."
Did you hear that? Psalm 91, "God will save you from the deadly pestilence." I mean, just take this verse, and fast forward to our day, is there any such thing as a deadly pestilence going on in our day and age? So, if you take Psalm 91 and you go, "This is the promise of God." What it means is if you dwell in the shelter of the Almighty, you should never have to be afraid of or concerned about a deadly pestilence. And yet, you know that there are some people who have had devastating effects. Even if you're a person who says, "Look, I'm not really sure that we needed all the measures, or I'm not sure that there's isn't a global conspiracy behind it." Or wherever you're at, there are still people who have had faith in God, who have struggled physically through this.
Here's what it says next. "He will cover you with his feathers and under his wings, you will find refuge. His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. You will not fear the terror of night nor the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness, nor the plague that destroys at midday." And it goes on and just keep speaking about how God will be the one who covers his people. So, what do we do with that? Well, one answer that's been thought of by people is to say, "Well, the people who struggle haven't really sought God." If you seek God and his righteousness, his kingdom, and his righteousness... In other words, if you prioritize it, then your needs will be completely met. That's one idea.
Another idea for some is to say, "Well, we tend to confuse our needs and our wants." That's what we tend to do. It says that God will meet our needs, basically. Not that he'll meet our wants. I experienced this recently. I have several kids who are driving age and where we live, it's very difficult to navigate life with kids at my kids' ages without multiple cars. So, we've had five cars for a long time. That's a lot of cars. My neighbors joke that I have a used car lot in my driveway. And my one neighbor is not even that kind. He's like, "You have a junkyard in your driveway." Because the cars we have driven are high mileage, old cars and we just try to get as much out of them. And so, I had a car that died recently.
It was one of those cars that my kid was driving, one of my kids. And we had to get rid of it and be done with it. And so, in my mind, it's like, "Okay, this is kind of an opportunity for me." And I fully realized this is a complete first world problem, to say that I don't have a fifth car. I understand this. And so, I'm looking and I'm saying, "Look, maybe I can take the car that I've been driving, which is 11 years old, 140,000 miles, and put that into the kid program. And maybe I can get something for myself. Maybe I can get something that I really want for myself."
Do you see the problem? Is in my mind, God's provision isn't, "I need something safe to get from point A to point B and maybe we just need to live on four cars for a while." Although that was very inconvenient this last week, because I'm trying to get somewhere and I have to coordinate hitching rides, all kinds of stuff, getting places so my kids could drive places. But what I want is not just a nice, safe vehicle to get from point A to point B, I was on Car Finder, kind of like Tinder for cars, where I'm like, "Swipe right, swipe left. That's the car I want."
And I'm thinking, maybe... Listen, one of the reasons sometimes that it seems like God doesn't provide is because we've confused our wants with our needs. And we've started to say, "God, if you're faithful, you're going to give me this." Instead of God saying, "I've given you everything that you need." But there's something else. And this is where Psalm 91 goes. Psalm 91, as it builds and gives all these sweeping statements about how God is going to work. And here's what it says in verse 11, and then in verse 12, it says, "For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways." So, pestilence won't get you. Enemies won't get you. You're going to have everything you need. God himself is going to give his angels charge concerning you.
It says this. It says, "They will lift up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone." These very verses are quoted in the book of Matthew. Do you know who quotes them? I mean, the Sunday school answer is Jesus, right? It's actually not Jesus who quotes these, it's Satan. And what Satan does in the temptation of Jesus, this is told in Matthew four verses one through 11, is Satan comes along and he's tempting Jesus to be disobedient to God. And at one point, what we're told is that he takes Jesus up on this high mountain, this is verse five. "The devil took him up on a holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple..." Not the mountain, but the temple. He says, "If you are the son of God, throw yourself down." And it says this, "For it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift up their hands so that you will not strike your foot against the stone.'"
Quoting Psalm 91. Now, why do I point this out? You see what Satan did is he came to Jesus in the moment of temptation, and he said, "Didn't God say that he'll keep you completely safe? So just jump off the temple and demonstrate to everyone that you're the son of God." What Satan was doing was he was using the idea and the word of God against God, as a presumption so that he could get either Jesus or his followers to say, "You know what? God is insufficient." Psalm 91 is poetry. Meaning they're grand statements.
I don't think that they're intended to be promises that we say, "Oh, there will never be a problem." But what Satan shows us is that if we absolutize kind of the promises that we'll actually miss the heart of God, which is God saying, "Listen, if you seek my kingdom, if you follow me, then I will make sure that you have enough as I define it and that you are enough for everything that's in front of you." But what happens from us, maybe many of us, for me is that we often think, "Well, I have to take care of it." Now presumption, by the way, is also stepping back and saying, "Well, I'm just going to trust God."
It's saying, "Because God said he'll take care of me, I don't need to plan for my financial future. I don't need to take care of my body. I don't need to worry about anything." It'd be a little bit like this. And that is, if you were saying, "I want to go for a swim and God has given his angels charge over me, and I know these are shark infested waters, but God has given his angels charge over me." At some point, God has given his angels charge over you, but he's also given you a brain. And so don't swim in shark infested waters and blame God when you have an accident, that's kind of what's happening here.
Don't neglect your own future and blame God because he hasn't come through for you because what this is pointing to is this idea of saying whose kingdom is most important in your life? Is it yours or is it God's? And here's the real problem for most of us. And that is, we would prefer safety to really following God. We would prefer that things are calm and taken care of. In fact, if you're a parent and you live in this area, chances are that one of your greatest concerns for your kids is not that they follow the kingdom of God as their primary priority in life, but that they're safe and financially successful and healthy. And that is not the kingdom of God.
It's not a bad thing. In fact, it's a good thing. I want my kids to be financially healthy and successful. In fact, I tell them all the time with four of them, they each show me 20 years of support. But here's the thing, if you're all about safety, yours, or your kids, what will happen is you'll say, "I just want to make sure that I have enough and I am enough and if God can help me, great." And it's a little bit like going to the visitor center at a national park. Have you ever gone to the visitor center at a national park? Where it's all paved paths and little signs and everything's good. And there are two kinds of people who visit national parks, by the way, there are those who like the visitors center tour and those who like to actually experience the national park. Usually, they marry each other.
And if you're in the visitor center kind of place, you're like, "I don't want to really work that hard to hike out to that. And there might be something wild out there that's dangerous. Let's just stay on this paved path." But you know where you really experience the incredible beauty of a national park? It's when you get away from the crowds and you take a little bit of a risk and you have some exertion, and you go beyond the bounds of complete safety. And Jesus is calling people to say, "Do you want to know how I'll take care of you? It's when you say, 'I will give myself fully to this.'" But by the way, there's another category of people. Some of us, it isn't safety that drives us, we look at the Christian experience and we say, "It's kind of boring."
And if you're a person who looks at the Christian experience and you say, "This is kind of boring," probably what is true about you is that you've never actually tried the Christian experience. What you've done is you've kind of come up to the edge of it and you've said, "I don't know. It's just a bunch of rules or something." Instead of saying, "What would it look like for me to make the priority of my life, the mission of my life, not about me, where then I just kind of take care of everything and I search for thrills, but I say, 'What would it look like if the kingdom of God were the priority of my life?'"
Here's what's probably true. Seek first the kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you. How can you say that the kingdom of God is your priority when you're unwilling to give God the first percentage of what it is that you have in resources, because you say, "I may not have enough, or I may not be enough if I don't spend stuff on myself.”? How can you say that the kingdom of God is your priority if in a time way, you are always saying, "I don't have time to worship or to be in a group or to serve.”? Because what you're doing is you're in essence saying, "You know what? I need to take care of my career, or I need to take care of me by making sure that I have enough me-time to be the best version of me. And therefore, I can't do any of that stuff." Or if you hold back on your talent, what you're doing in part is you're saying, "It's my kingdom above your kingdom." So, what does it look like to say that God's kingdom is first?
Well, what it looks like is coming to a point where you say, "I will, whenever there's a difference, choose God's way, God's kingdom over my own. And I'll trust him with the result." Some of us might be here and this whole idea of God and the kingdom is new to us. Because as we come here today, we're just trying to figure out if there is a God, if we believe in a God, but here's what I want you to know, God isn't begging you to believe in him. Yes, there's a verse in Revelation 3:20 that says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock." But that isn't God begging to come in a door that he doesn't have access to. What that is, is it's God's heart of invitation. And what he's inviting you to is something so much greater than simply being able to say, "I walk on the safe paths. And then somehow hope that God will give me enough to get through."
But instead, he's calling you, calling me to say the purpose of my life is greater than my own life. Here's how Rick Warren wrote about this years ago in his book, Purpose Driven Life. He said, "The purpose of your life is far greater than your own personal fulfillment, your peace of mind, or even your happiness. It's far greater than your family, your career, or even your wildest dreams and ambitions. If you want to know why you were put on this planet, you must start with God. You were born for his purpose and by his purpose."
See, a kingdom of God is not just something you go to someday, it's something that exists here and now, and you can participate in. If you're a follower of Jesus Christ, you don't merely have a dead philosopher or moralizer who points you to the good way, you have a living God who says, "You know what? Wherever you are, whatever your needs are, I am engaged in your life and the more you prioritize my kingdom, the more you can rest with certainty that I will take care of the things that you're afraid of." That is what it means to prioritize the kingdom of God. And the reason you can do this is because you know Jesus has promised it. And secondly because Jesus has shown his willingness to give everything for you and for me.
See, Jesus went to the cross. He doesn't just stand aloof and say, "You know what? Good luck following me." He says, "I will go to the cross because I know you'll come short." And that's what grace is. And one of the beautiful things about the Christian experience is even when you haven't prioritized the kingdom of God, so many times God is just gracious and loving in his extension of himself to us, that we end up experiencing all the good things anyway, that's what the cross is.
But how much more when we say, "God, I'm aware of what you ask of me and I want that to be my priority." If you're bored with the Christian experience, try being completely honest about everything. Try following God's plan for sexuality in your life entirely. Try prioritizing God's kingdom with your resources and see if it doesn't push you to say, "This is a little on the edge." And what you'll experience is God's goodness. And here's what I've seen in years and years of being a Pastor. I've watched people wrestle with this.
And almost without exception, what I've heard from people is, "When I prioritize God and his ways, I have no regrets, but every time that I make it about me, my world, my ways, we look back often with a pile of regret." So, the question is, will you let fear drive you to say, "I'm going to run after having enough and being enough." Or will I say, "I'm going to seek God's kingdom and let God take care of it in my life."
Father, we thank you that you make such bold statements through Jesus about seeking your kingdom and your righteousness and all these things being added onto us. And I pray today that you would indeed let each one of us encounter what it means to seek your kingdom and see you add these things to us so that we don't live with fear. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
