[AI translation] Three years ago, God's teaching spoke to us through the same text. Now, at the request of others, I would like to speak about the same Word through the Holy Spirit of God.We all know very well from our own experience what it means to worry about tomorrow. In our human terms, tomorrow is uncertainty. It is always hiding something. But we never know what! It can be good, but it can also be bad! And it is a human weakness in us that we tend to give more chance to the bad than to the good. Hence the fear, the anxious worrying, and then the myriad of probabilities of imagined problems. There is a Greek legend that the god-father, the earth-goddess and the goddess of worry once argued about which of them should have the man? In the end, the debate was settled: after death, man's soul should belong to the god-father, his body to the earth-goddess, and until the moment of his death he should be the child of the goddess of worry. So says an old pagan saying. It expresses the great truth that to be a worrier is a heathen thing, and a worrier is a heathen man.
The believer is clearly told, "Worry not therefore for tomorrow." Mt6.34. So why not worry about tomorrow? Let us now look to the Word for an answer to this question!
1) First of all, because Jesus says. He Himself exhorts all His children, who are struggling and huddling under the weight of their troubles, "Do not therefore worry about tomorrow" (v.34). The Jesus who gave His life to regain the lost kingdom of heaven: He thinks of what His own should eat, what they should drink and what they should wear here on earth. The Jesus Who shed His blood to cleanse the soul from all sin: the care of daily bread did not escape His thoughtful attention. He who saves souls from death, takes the greatest problem to heart.
The fact is that when Jesus spoke of prayer and said, "Go into your inner room and shut your door and pray." Mt 6,6 this also shows how much our Lord had the material things of life in mind. Because that inner room was the pantry. For the dwellings of that time had no other room to be locked up except the pantry. So Jesus says, go in there to pray, where the smell of the most material life fills the air! To the place where empty shelves remind the poor man most of his poverty, or where full sacks remind the rich man of the poverty of another, Jesus sends the worshipper. God does not look down on the material side of life, in fact, He has so sanctified it that He Himself took on material form when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Where the world is brightest, where the earth is greenest, where all the evils of materiality are most susceptible: in the human body, there God pleased to enter into time and the world. Christ's becoming man also means that the stomach question and all the other matters of a material nature connected with it are the subject of God's special care. God also takes our bodily life seriously, and can no more seriously than God takes this body upon himself and humbles himself among us to the point where the body struggles with the problems of hunger, cold, thirst. He knows very well what it means to be human, what it means when the soul is ready but the body is weak, what a great matter it is to have to worry about bread, food, clothing, work, housing, in general, all the things for which He Himself prays: "Give us this day our daily bread." Mt 6,11
And Jesus says, "Do not therefore worry about tomorrow." Mt 6,34. who, as if to say that the God who has provided for your salvation in heaven, would leave you alone in the midst of your earthly troubles? Do you not think that the greatest love would look indifferently on your toiling in material troubles? He has already proved his love for you in a far more vital matter, in the matter that cuts into eternal life, so how could I not care for the circumstances of life through which your journey home takes you! If this is temporary, if you dare not trust your earthly life to him, how can you trust the greater, the unearthly, the eternal? So I am not saying, I am just passing on what Jesus says: "Do not worry about tomorrow." Whoever believes that Jesus says this, has no reason to be anxious about tomorrow. Whoever believes that Jesus is saying this, all his worries can be transformed at this moment into a great, calm childlike confidence.
2) For the believer, this would be enough and no further reason for not worrying would be needed. But Jesus himself justifies his words when he says: "Do not therefore be anxious for tomorrow, ... (v. 34) This statement shows how well Jesus knows from his own experience the burdens and burdens of human life. Not only is it small-minded and distrustful of God to worry about tomorrow, but it is plain folly. Most people are crushed under the burdens of life because they add to the worries of today the worries of tomorrow. The burdens that the Lord God wisely wants to lay on us in instalments over days and years: he takes them all at once and, naturally, the overload causes him to break down. To import the possible troubles of tomorrow into the affairs of today is a very unwise management of physical and spiritual strength. If tomorrow does bring trouble, it will bring strength. Today, however, all existing strength is needed to solve the concrete tasks and problems of today and to bear the burdens of today, so there is no need to borrow problems from the future. Jesus knows very well that each new day provides us with a new burden, and that burden is just enough for the strength a man has from the time he gets up until he goes to bed. So it is not necessary to exhaust this strength of one day with the burdens of the next. "Every day is enough for its own burden." Mt 6,34c Do not therefore with anxious fear take upon yourself the burden of tomorrow, for it will not be lightened by it when it comes. Do not try to take upon yourself all at once what God's providential grace wants to carry away in instalments. If you could take the warning of this Word, "Every day its own trouble is enough," seriously, you would not have time and strength left to deal today with the possible troubles of tomorrow.
3) Jesus also says that tomorrow will worry about its own affairs. Even if the new day brings new problems or difficulties, for the believer, divine help and grace will always be renewed. We have a beautiful hymn, taken from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, that we sing, "His great mercy is renewed every morning." I could also say the same thing, that God never gives solutions to imaginary problems, but I can only ever expect his help in the present, here and now, in the present trouble. Just as you could not take more than a day's worth of manna in those days, because what was left of it melted like ice the next day. Every morning, you had to start taking that day's dose all over again. The Lord will give you strength for tomorrow's problem tomorrow. God never gives advice or help or light for tomorrow, because there is no tomorrow, it does not exist, but always only for today, for what is actually there, for reality, for what is! That is why Jesus always directs the attention and gaze of his followers to today. We, who live in time and measure it by past, present and future, can only ever come into contact with the eternal God in the now, in the present moment. Eternity means precisely that it is an eternal now, an eternal present, an eternal moment: therefore, of our time, it is this now, the present, the moment we are living: that is the closest to eternity. The now, the present, is the point where time and eternity meet.
I am empowered to bear the cross that now weighs on my shoulders. I can only ever expect and experience the gracious, empowering presence of Jesus in the present. That is why Satan always wants to distract us from today and focus our attention on tomorrow. By holding on to the promise, the spell of tomorrow, Satan can fill today with a lot of fear, anxiety or even vain optimism, whatever it is. Its main ambition is to divert thought from reality, from what exists, to something that does not exist, or at most, could exist! In this way Satan achieves incredible results. Because he who is always thinking about how it will be tomorrow, or in the spring, or in the autumn, and if it will be like this or like that, what I will do, what I will do, loses the today and thus his connection with eternity, and then the balance is already upset and the imagined problems wear on the nerves. The existing troubles and miseries have never separated a true believer from God, but the fear of the un-existing, imagined troubles and miseries always separates you from the Lord God!
Do not fear what is not, and if you do have it, you will have the strength to have it! Jesus knows why He says, "Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Every day is enough for you.
So what shall we do when we are troubled and when heavy sighs come from our bosom in the evening and in the morning? Let us take the advice that the Apostle Paul wrote when his life was in the greatest danger: "Do not be anxious about anything, but in your prayers and supplications always present your requests to God with thanksgiving. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."
Amen
Date: 24 February 1952.
Lesson
Mt 6,25-34