This recording is from Willow Creek Church in Wintersprings, Florida, where Reverend Kevin Labia is our senior pastor. Today's message is Part 1 in a series titled, Stretched, How Grace Creates Space for a Better Life. The sermon is taken from Matthew, Chapter 6, Verse 33, and is titled, When Less Is More. Now here's Kevin with today's message. I'm going to ask you to turn in your bottles to the gospel of Matthew. We're going to be looking at Matthew, Chapter 5, or rather, Chapter 6, excuse me, beginning with Verse 25, with special emphasis on Verse 33 this morning, Matthew, Chapter 6. And let's go to the Lord in prayer as we open up to His Word. Father, we thank you for the fact that you love us, that we are not adrift in this world without a rudder, without an anchor, instead, even though we are tossed to and fro from time to time, we are deeper still held, resolutely and strong in your hand, that we do not need to fear, be afraid, but we instead can have confidence and boldness in the face of life, knowing that we are yours, that we cannot be lost, that we are yours forever. And would you help us this morning to understand a little bit more deeply who we are, and to live according to that grace, in view of it, to shape our priorities, and to live our day to day lives in ways that testify to the fact that we are yours, and that we have an abundant life through your Son Jesus Christ. Father, for those who are here this morning, for whom church is a new thing, or maybe haven't been here in a while, maybe I've ever been here, Lord, we pray that you would encourage them, that they are where you desire them to be, that they are loves, that we love them, and that we warmly welcome them. Would you open up your word to them, too, in special ways? We pray in Jesus' name, amen. And do you feel stretched in your everyday life? I know what it's like as one year closes in another begins to wonder how this new year is going to look. What my involvements are going to be, what I'm going to try to accomplish, what I tried to accomplish in 2014 that didn't really come together under the wire in those last days, what I endeavored, and by God's grace, enjoy, do you know what it's like to feel stretched? I think we all do, sometimes it's good to be stretched, it's good to go outside of our comfort zones and try some new things, and what's thinking is I return from Pennsylvania visiting family in the post-Christmas times, celebrating with them, coming home just yesterday, driving through the night. I was thinking, you know, it was real stretched and moved from there to Florida, but reflecting on the past two years, just being so thankful that I was stretched that way. My family, my kids, my wife, God has blessed us so much since coming to Florida, and a big part of that is you, and we're so thankful for that. That stretch was really good, and moving to Florida has many other things that stretch you. We never live among so many animals that could kill you anywhere in the United States of America. I remember I always enjoyed hunting in Pennsylvania, but I always hunted things that didn't hunt me back. You know, when I got here, I was a little stretcher, Jim Ackerman, one of our elders, took me gator hunting, and I thought, you know, somebody would approach me when I was 10 years old, told me that one day I'd go gator hunting in the middle of the night with an elder from a Presbyterian church. I wouldn't believe them, but I did, I was stretched, and it was beautiful, a great sunset from the airboat, and a lake in Florida, the middle of the night pulling a dead gator into a boat, and I don't know, incidentally, this isn't in the notes, this is just funny. We pulled this gator into the boat, you know, everybody there is, it's a various degrees experience in this, I think. I'm not. I didn't realize that after you killed the gator, the gator could still like move, just like, you know, like it's muscles, there's still, there's electrical impulse in there, so I pulled this gator into the boat, and this thing moves. Oh, man, I nearly an architect right there, but in the grand scheme of things, a very good stretch, it was a great thing. Being stretched in some ways is very good, but you know, being stretched in too many ways is a bad thing. We can get very frazzled, our life can be frayed, even at the edges, if we get pulled in too many different directions, and I think that's where most of us, not all of us, most of us live our lives, probably feeling that from moment to moment, day to day, we're pulled in a lot of different directions. Some of them complimentary, oftentimes very competing, maybe even contradictory, and we don't know how to keep it all holding together. Our Director of Worship, Dr. Jeff Vogue, and he recommended to me a great book by Richard Swenson. I want to encourage you to read anything by this guy, I found that he's a real treasure. If you go to Amazon, it's Swenson, S-W-E-N-S-O-N, not Svenson, Richard Swenson. He brilliantly described being stretched too far as something like, quote, being 30 minutes late to the doctor's office, because you were 20 minutes late getting out of the bank, because you were 10 minutes late getting the kids to school, because the car ran out of gas two blocks from the gas station, and you forgot your wallet. I read that description, and I thought, you know, that actually sounds like last Tuesday a little bit. That's oftentimes where life has me, where I feel that I've come to live life, and maybe you could share a little bit of that. I know some of you, you've got it all together, and we're all very impressed, but I think most of you probably live day to day life, feeling a little stretched. From my perspective as a pastor, I've been in the church ministry for 17 years now, and over that time, I've really seen practically how most of us live our lives stretch to thin. We eat too much, exercise too little, we're awake too much, sleep too little, we do too much, rest too little, and on and on we go, stretching ourselves to thin in so many different ways. When you think about it, really it's kind of ironic, because our culture actually has so many tools and techniques that are supposed to make life simpler. We have all these electronic devices, all of these gadgets, all of these apps. You can go on Google Play or the iTunes store, and you can find an app for almost anything that's designed to make your life easier. I've got like 15 of these things. I think you've got to learn how to use them, and they start buzzing and dinging all hours of the night. My kids have all these electronic devices, and you know, my wife and I thought that it would make our trips back home to Pennsylvania and back to Florida a little bit easier, everybody would be on their devices. It hasn't made it any easier, because now we've got to remember where the cords are. Certain people have to charge their devices at certain times. There's fighting and going back and forth. Things are dinging and ringing and telling the kids to do certain things at certain times in me and my wife. We don't know what's going on. It's over ironic. Life has not become simpler with all of our tools and techniques. In fact, anything, it's only expanded our capability of attempting even more. And the more we do, the more directions we're pulled, the more stretched we are. Our lives become frazzled, they become frayed, we're stressed, we're anxious, we're out of balance, fearful, life, really, if we're not careful, can lose its saver. Peace and joy can evaporate. Now if you are like me, you sense that from time to time, and maybe toward the end of a year, more than at any other time, during the year, and so you resolve to do things differently. You make resolutions. I need to create space in my life. I need to cut the clutter. I need to streamline things. Maybe some of the tools and techniques you read about in magazines or in the newspaper, five steps to this, ten steps to that, you resolve, you're going to do, but you know from your own experience, and you know from what you've seen in countless articles and other places, what a Franklin Covey study found that 30% of New Year's resolutions are done by the end of January, and four-fifths of them never see the end of the year. Only one in five resolutions is kept. It's not exactly cause for optimism, but I think it points to something probably a little bit more important, and that is there's probably a deeper cause for our failure. There's probably something more systemic going on in our frazzled and frantic lives, something spiritual, and I think Jesus speaks to it in the sermon on the Mount, and that's what we're going to look at this morning, that we need to relieve the tension that produces so much anxiety in our lives. We need to increase the space in our lives where peace can be pursued, rather than being hurried and harried all the time, overextending ourselves, stretching ourselves too thin, we need to relax life a little bit, and create the space to seek after God above all else. And then in seeking after God, find that every other thing is added unto us, as Jesus says. So today, and over the next five weeks, that's what we're going to look at in the sermon series called Stretch. We're going to see how God's grace creates the space necessary to find peace, to restore sanity to everyday life. So then in mind, I want to encourage you to read along with me, begin with verse 25, down to verse 33, where I'm going to draw your special attention. Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life. What you eat or what you drink nor about your body, what you will put on is not life more than food and the body more than clothing. Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? What are the lilies of the field, how they grow? They neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you even Solomon, that Old Testament king, notable for his wealth and earthly glories, in all his glory was not a raid like one of these. But if God so close the grasp of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more close you or you of little faith? Verse 31, therefore do not be anxious saying what shall we eat, what shall we drink, what shall we wear for the Gentiles, the pagans, those who don't fear God. They seek after all these things, and your heavenly father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow. Therefore tomorrow will be anxious for itself, sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Now, this happens within the context of the sermon on the Mount, arguably the most famous sermon of Christ's teachings, and in the servant of the Mount Jesus addresses so many different things, divorce, adultery, prayer, charity, so many other things, and when you're reading it you might quickly be drawn to the idea that Jesus is just kind of going through a smorgas board of topics, not really with one overarching purpose, but is just rather kind of preaching topically to the assembled multitude, but that is not the case at all. Jesus actually is teaching a central truth, and that is you can live your life relying on yourself, or you can live your life relying upon the grace of your God. And to understand that, you need to go back to chapter 5 verse 20, because it's in chapter 5 verse 20 also in the sermon on the Mount, that Jesus warned his listeners that unless their righteousness exceeded the Pharisees, they had no hope of seeing the kingdom of heaven. Now, if you didn't grow up in the church, you knew the Christian faith, maybe you haven't read the Bible, you don't realize the weight and the enormity of what Jesus says in chapter 5 verse 20, when he says that the righteousness of the people must exceed that of the Pharisees, the Pharisees were known for being super religious. They were known for having great attention to detail when it came to the laws of God. They were known for doing everything right in the eyes of the people. They were the heroes. Among all of the people in the world, all of the pagans, all of the Gentiles, all of the half-hearted Jews, these were the ones who took God so seriously it seemed that they structured their entire lives around God. They were doing more, they were trying hard, they were being better than everybody else, but Jesus says nothing that they did was good enough to get into the kingdom of heaven. What does that sound like to the multitudes gathered there? I would imagine that sounds quite depressing because if they're not doing enough and we need to do more, who could possibly be saved? I imagine the original listeners heard Jesus' words and wondered to themselves, who on earth could do more than the Pharisees in all of their superficial and hyper-spiritual religion? It turns out that God considered a lot of people much more righteous than the Pharisees and very surprising people. In fact, it's Jesus who will later say that the prostitutes, the tax collectors, the lepers, the pagan Gentiles, the drunkards, all of these are entering heaven left and right according to Jesus, but the Pharisees are not coming in. Now is it because the prostitutes, the tax collectors, the lepers, the drunkards, all of them got together, worked harder, tried more, did better, no. In fact, to the outside observer, they probably didn't look like they were working very hard at all. Jesus was not teaching that heaven, its peace, its joy, comes through hard toil and work, adding more and more and more to your life. He was teaching a very counterintuitive truth that heaven's rest comes not really by work, but by rest, resting in Christ in His work for the people. You see, it was the prostitute, the tax collector, the leper, the pagan who knew that nothing they could do would produce what only God can give by grace, lasting peace and joy. They were relieved of the delusion that they could manufacture their own forms of salvation. They knew that if they would be saved, it would not be from anything within them. It would be because Christ was perfect for them, that not their work, but His work on their behalf would make a way to experience lasting joy and peace in God. The Sermon on the Mount is more than just that negative attack on the Pharisees. It's also a very positive description of a new way of living, a way of life characterized not by trusting in ourselves and our works, but trusting in Christ in His on our behalf. The Sermon on the Mount is a negative attack on self-righteous religion, but also a positive description of what true faith in God looks like. And listen carefully, it doesn't look like anxiety, it doesn't look like worry, it doesn't look like doing more, trying harder, being better, it looks a lot like rest, not worrying because your greatest cares are met, not in your efforts, like Christ on your behalf. Jesus came to give us a new way of living, not just a longer life, not just life ever lasting. Jesus came to give abundant life, a better kind of life, a life lived in the joy and peace of God. When you look at your life, is it characterized by joy and peace, or is it frantic? Is it filled with worry and anxiety day to day? When we come to this understanding, a question should erupt within our hearts, well, great. How can I live that though? How can I replace my fear, anxieties, and worry with the peace of Christ? It's one thing to note theologically, that's what God wants for me. How do I actually come to a place of enjoying it? Well, Jesus speaks to that, the Sermon on the Mount is very, very practical. Now I want you to notice that what Jesus is describing in the Sermon on the Mount specifically our passage this morning is very, very practical ways in which you can come to live a new kind of life, a life characterized by grace, not by toil some work, a life enjoyed in Christ. And I want to give you three things. The first one is this. You might want to write it down. This is very, very important, is that your perspective about yourself matters. How you view yourself matters. How you view your standing, your position, your identity is going to define the way you live your life. In the world, views your identity this way. It says you are what you do. Back in the book of Genesis, God commanded His created people to be fruitful and multiply. He said go into all the earth and subdue it, exercise dominion over it. People didn't want to do that. After the great flood in Genesis 6, 7, 8 and 9, later on we see all of the people rebelling against God again. They've not fanned out as they were commanded to. They're all congregated together on the plains and shine are in their building a tower. Do you remember this? The tower of Babel. The stated motivation for building that tower was to make a name for ourselves. Alienated from God, rebelling against God, they were left to themselves. And left to themselves, they had no name. They had to make one for themselves. And what they thought was that by doing something, they could carve out for themselves an identity. That's the way the world lives. You are what you do. You don't have an identity. You're generic, you're nondescript, until you do something to get the world's notice. The notice of the people around you. And then you carve out for yourself a reputation, a record, an identity, and you live according to your works. That defines who you are. So if you want to solve the problem of significance in your life, you have to do more. Try harder, be better, and then finally, through striving and sweating, you'll come into some sense of significance if those around you will affirm it, and you chase it. And you're filled with worry and anxiety the whole time. Well, Jesus flips the script completely and says you are not what you do. Jesus says you do what you are. If you think you're an orphan with no identity, if you think you're generic and unloved, you're going to live into that identity. You're going to chase the world and it's approval, you're going to multiply your commitments all in some vain quest to get somebody to authenticate you. But if you know who you are in Christ, you live out that identity. And that identity doesn't mean restlessness, it means rest. When my children were little, we would go on long car rides, and in order to space them out, we might stop from time to time along the road to get a little treat. Maybe an ice cream, maybe a doughnut, don't judge me, and when I feed my children on free in Christ, they'll feed them whatever I want, even if it makes them spastic in the back of my van, which eventually I learned. But carrots lost their allure, it was too late, it had to be something like that. But we have a van, I've got four children, so we've got those two bench rows, and we would put the older kids in the back, and the younger kids in the middle, because we could reach back to them and help them as we were driving. It was always funny to me, it was a little cruel social experiment, this is a sick and twisted I am. I would like to hand treats over the little ones, back to the back seat, to the older ones, and watch the reactions of the younger ones in the middle, and as they got older, it was funny. When they were little, and they did no idea what was going on, there was no reaction. But then they grew into observing, and they understood, hey, there's a tree, what was that dude? Where's my tree? And it was funny watching my daughter, my daughter can scream like an opera singer, and she would unleash vocal hell in our van, and she thought she was overlooked. She would live in a place of panic, why? Identity. She was growing up, but she hadn't yet grown into understanding who she is, and she didn't understand who I was. She knew in some sense I was her father, in some sense she was a daughter, but she didn't understand all that meant, and so she lived in that moment in some degree of fear. What I'd be overlooked, what a blessing to this child, mean blessing for me too, as she's grown up, and as my kids have grown up, they know there's blessings for everyone in the van. You might have to wait a little longer than the next person, but the blessing's coming to you too. Why? Because your love, your child, that's your identity, I can forget you. Jesus gives two great arguments against a life characterized by worry, anxiety, and restlessness in these passages, or in these verses. The first argument is an argument that anybody could see is just an effective. What isn't accomplished? Think about all the worrying anxiety you've expended in 2014, didn't it accomplish anything? No. It may be motivated you to take action, which in that might be good, but in and of itself it contributes nothing. Jesus says, who of you by worrying could add a single hour to your lifespan? You can't. It's pointless. But deeper and more profoundly, Jesus is saying that all of your worrying anxiety, all the stress you have in this life, is inconsistent, it's not only ineffective, it's inconsistent with your identity. It's conduct, unbecoming, of a child of God. You're worried in anxiety, testify that you don't really believe who you are in Christ, and you do what you are, or at least what you think you are. When you forget who you are in Christ, a dearly loved child of God, you think it's all up to you. You're alone. You're forgotten. You're an orphan. You're generic. You're unknown. You're easily forgotten. You worry that you're going to be left without a nice cream cone. Your faulty view of your identity compels you to try and make a name for yourself. You think that you need to establish a record for yourself. You think you need to justify your existence to make sure that your life matters, and what do you do as a result? You get filled with anxiety, worry, and you tell yourself lies. You tell yourself you need to do more. Try harder. Be better to make yourself something. If I lose this weight, then I'll finally be worthwhile. If I get married or remarried, if I date this person or that person, then I'll know that I matter, that I'm adequate. If I make more money, then I won't feel so inferior. If I get that promotion, and I'll be respected, and better yet, respectable, and you live out those lies rather than the truth of God. And those lies drive you to stretch yourself thinner and thinner and thinner, trying to do all of the things, get all of the things, say all of the things, think all of the things necessary to create for yourself an identity. And ironically, an identity that would never be as good as the identity you already have in Christ. In a very real way, this section of the sermon amount is Jesus pulling you aside as an older brother and saying, would you just chill out? None of his stuff lasts. It's all fleeting, it all fades. Your weight's going to go up and down. Your marriage will have good times and bad. Your Roth IRA is going to fluctuate, but you know what's never going to change? The fact that I stinking adore you, not because of what you do, or what you don't do. I love you because I'm gracious, and I delight to show mercy, and I delight it to show it to you. Jesus is saying to you, you're my little brother. You're my little sister forever, and it's never going to change. I'm the big brother, every little kid wants, I'm the king you long for, ruler, a defender. So you don't need to panic and toil and be restless, work hard to be sure, make things as good as you can make them, but listen carefully, work with me, not in the place of me. When we work in the place of God, rather than with God, when we try and make ourselves something, rather than rest and stand in awe of what God by grace has made us, we stretch ourselves way too thin. Rest is elusive. So the second thing I want to point you to is not only that you're perspective, define how you live, but your perspective shapes your priorities. How you view yourself day-to-day is going to shape how you live your life. That's why it's so important to not live your Christian life in isolation, but to stay in community. That's why it's so important that every day you must remember the gospel and what God by grace has made you be reminded that you're forgiven, that you are loved, that God your father adores you, that he knows every hair on your head not as a matter of omniscient trivia, but because he loves you so much, he delights to know every little nook and cranny of you. He sings over you, what could you give yourself, that God has not already given you so freely, so wonderfully, so graciously in Christ? You know, when you start to understand that love and live and view of it more and more, you start to love God more and more and return and the things of God, and then your grip on the things of this world that you thought were so necessary, it's lessened. You start to live and view of your identity. I got to see the movie Unbroken over the holiday break, if you haven't seen it, you should and I know you bibliophiles, you all say the same thing. You need to read the book, I know I need to read the book. I haven't yet. Why? No reading. I enjoy the book. I'll enjoy the book at some point, but enjoy the movie a lot. If you haven't seen it, you should see it. It's the story of Louis Amphorini who grew up here in America, became an Olympian, and then soldier in World War II was captured by the Japanese, this torture, came to faith in Christ, a wonderful story, a wonderful book. What I didn't realize, not having read the book was early in his life, he didn't believe anything good of himself. He thought he was worthless. He really thought that he was no good, and so he acted out of that identity, stole, he drank, he fought, he's a rabble rouser, and his older brother came alongside of him and said, Louis, what you believe about yourself isn't true. You're so much more than you think you are. At first, Louis didn't believe it, but with his brother's continual affirmations and nudging, he started to live in view of that new identity. He started to run on a track team and found out that yes, in fact, he wasn't a very good runner, so much so that he would make the United States Olympic team compete in Germany. How did he come to that? Because his older brother came alongside of him, and your older brother comes alongside of you, remind you of who you are. You don't need the world, and it's approval, you don't need power, prestige, possession, you don't need those things as anchors for your significance and your peace and your joy. You have a new identity, one that is greater than anything this world could ever give. And so you're free. You don't need to chase after the world. You can let go of what is truly not of God and reorder what is good, but maybe out of whack in your life, God's grace gives you the freedom to reshape your priorities for an abundant life and to pursue his peace. So as we close, let me invite you to take inventory this coming week. Maybe grab a cup of coffee at Dunkin' Donuts or Starbucks, grab a piece of paper, spend a few minutes looking at your life on paper, map out the things that you do and ask yourself, why do I do this? Is this a bad thing that I should no longer do? And some of you have that overt sin in your life. You know you're not walking with the Lord in certain areas. You know that the abundant life to which God has called you is being compromised and you're enjoyment of it because of an overt sin that needs to be removed. You need to fight against that by God's grace, say no to that more and more. But maybe your problem isn't overt sin. Maybe it's not something that's bad. Maybe it's a good thing that you've made an ultimate thing. Maybe you just need to reorder your priorities so that the good stands in deference to the great. Take some time to write out your life. Look at what you do, how you spend your time, your money, maybe pray over it, surrender your life to the Lord, ask the Holy Spirit to speak into your life with conviction. As Jesus said in the sermon of the Mount, don't be filled with worry and anxiety. Seek first the kingdom and its righteousness. Seek after that above all else and then you'll find that other things tend to fall into their proper order. Why? Because as you seek first the kingdom and its righteousness, you understand more of who God is and more of who you are and you live in view of that identity. Are you overstretched by involvements? Are you overstretched by too much stuff? Are you overstretched by too much debts? Are you overstretched by others' expectations? Over the next several weeks we're going to look at all of those things in the view of who you are by grace and maybe God will give you a little more space for greater peace and enjoyment of His joy in the coming year. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your grace and your mercy that frees us to say no to the things that are not of you. And yes, to the things that you designed for us, where we thank you that an abundant life is possible, not just a long life, lived everlastingly with your glory, but a truly abundant life, a life characterized by peace and joy, a sense of your significance and purpose, a contentment in all circumstances. Father, would you help us to pursue that peace and define the space we need by your grace? We pray in Jesus' name Amen. Willow Creek Church is a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in America. Our website is www.willowcreekchurch.org and our phone number is 407-699-82-11.