Be Not Anxious About Tomorrow

The point: Be delivered from sinful anxiety about things by allowing certain truths to hold your mind.

Martin uses the analogy of highway danger signs of increasing size and intensity to illustrate how God emphasizes certain warnings in Scripture, indicating the extreme danger of sinful attachment and concern for worldly things.

When you're driving down the highway and you come to just a little sign that says danger, curve, well, you figure it's a curve you can negotiate without too much problem. If you're driving a little bit further and you come to a sign that's bigger that says danger, curve, slow down to forty miles an hour, why the bigger sign means you better take a little more caution, and then sometimes you've come, I'm sure, and you're driving to these places in the mountains where you take one of these literal hairpin turns and as you approach it'll say danger, curve ahead, and you get a little closer and th...

2:56 - 4:15 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: This section delves into the nature of sinful anxiety, asserting that it is always occupied with the future and is inherently futile. Martin illustrates that worry ceases when a…

He illustrates that worry is always futuristic by contrasting worrying about a potential flat tire with the action taken when a flat tire actually occurs, showing that worry is useless in the face of actual problems.

But worry is always futuristic. And it's nature. Let me explain what I mean. You might sit here this morning and say, boy, you know, when I went out this morning I noticed that my left front tire was getting kind of bald.

16:14 - 16:29 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: This section delves into the nature of sinful anxiety, asserting that it is always occupied with the future and is inherently futile. Martin illustrates that worry ceases when a…

This illustration further demonstrates the futuristic nature of worry: one worries about flying before the trip, but in an actual plane crash, there's no time for worry, only action or acceptance, highlighting worry's futility.

You call some friends. You see, that problem of a flat tire as long as it's out here in the future will cause worry but when you actually get into that problem you don't worry. You do something about it. Some of you have to make a trip and you've never flown before and maybe you're afraid to fly.

17:00 - 17:15 Read in full sermon

Driving home: But you never had sinful anxiety and praise in the same heart at the same time. One or the other's got to go.

Martin describes a person who worries about losing blessings (health, family, job, money) even in prosperity, and then worries about how to escape straits if they come, showing how anxiety blinds one to present blessings.

It's like the fellow who's got his health, got his wife, and got his children, got his good job but he's worrying himself sick that his wife may die of cancer or that his kids are going to be killed on the playground or that there's going to be a recession and a depression and all the money he's got in the bank isn't going to be worth anything. When he's in prosperity all he does is fret and fuss because he's afraid it's going to come to an end. Then if it does come to an end and he's in straits what does he do? He's frustrated and worrying how's he going to get out of them.

23:02 - 23:34 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Worry does not empty tomorrow of its trials but it does empty today of its strength and its comfort. Worry does not enable me to escape the future trouble but it unfits me to cope with it when it comes.

He quotes a saying that 'men and women are worn out and enfeebled and aged more by corruption loading care than by hard labor,' emphasizing that worry, not work, is the primary cause of exhaustion.

Someone has well said men and women are worn out and enfeebled and aged more by corruption loading care than by hard labor. A merry heart goes all the day whereas a sad one tires in an hour. That's true. That's true.

27:53 - 28:17 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Worry does not empty tomorrow of its trials but it does empty today of its strength and its comfort. Worry does not enable me to escape the future trouble but it unfits me to cope with it when it comes.

Martin quotes a profound statement: 'Worry does not empty tomorrow of its trials but it does empty today of its strength and its comfort,' illustrating how anxiety harms the present without helping the future.

Someone else has well said worry does not empty tomorrow of its trials but it does empty today of its strength and its comfort. It does not enable us to escape the future trouble but it unfits us to cope with it when it comes. That's a tremendous statement. I want to repeat it.

28:18 - 28:39 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Worry does not empty tomorrow of its trials but it does empty today of its strength and its comfort. Worry does not enable me to escape the future trouble but it unfits me to cope with it when it comes.

He uses the analogy of robbing Friday night's rest to illustrate how robbing today of its due rest or peace (through worry) robs tomorrow of its legitimate labors and effectiveness.

It blinds us to present blessings. It unfits us for present duties and it cripples us for future responsibility. The man who robs Monday of some of its due rest is robbing Tuesday of some of its legitimate labors. That's why the only reason I have a watch night service is because some of you like it.

29:17 - 29:41 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: Martin details the detrimental effects of sinful anxiety on the individual believer. It blinds them to present blessings, making praise impossible; it unfits them for present…

The metaphor of feet becoming tender from treading over imaginary thorns, making them unable to handle real thorns, illustrates how worry cripples one for future duties by depleting strength for actual challenges.

Someone said, we get our feet so tender from treading over imaginary thorns that we have no ability to tread over the real thorns when we actually face them for our feet have become tender. Walking on the imaginary ones. And that's true. For you see, whatever evils we face, the Lord said, sufficient unto every day is the evil thereof.

30:59 - 31:23 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: This section explores how sinful anxiety negatively impacts a believer's ability to minister to others. It makes them insensitive to the distress signals of those around them and…

Martin uses the analogy of a stuttering man seeking help from another who has overcome stuttering, not from one who still stutters, to illustrate how a world full of anxiety needs to see Christians free from it to be effective witnesses.

You see, the man who's got a bad problem stuttering doesn't come to another man who's stuttering and ask him, how can I get better?

34:31 - 34:38 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: This section explores how sinful anxiety negatively impacts a believer's ability to minister to others. It makes them insensitive to the distress signals of those around them and…

He describes a 'generation of neurotics' produced by time payment plans, constantly fretting about creditors, to show how worldly concerns can ensnare people in anxiety, making them deaf to spiritual signals.

The time payment plan has produced a generation of neurotics for all the time fretting about how they're going to keep one creditor off their back and keep the one that's barking the loudest quiet long enough to shoot a little something to this one over here and just enmeshed in a world of concern about things.

35:20 - 35:42 Read in full sermon

Driving home: It's because they fail to recognize the first step to cure sinful anxiety is to stop and realize each day and only one day has its own quota of problems parceled out by the hand of a sovereign God.

Martin recounts John Newton's illustration of the year's problems as a 'bundle of sticks' (faggots/logs) that God parcels out one per day, explaining that anxiety arises when we try to carry yesterday's and tomorrow's logs today.

What's the cure? Well our Lord gives us many hints to it here in our text several very practical ones. The first aspect of the cure for sinful anxiety is this recognize that each day has its own quota of problems parceled out by the hand of a sovereign God. John Newton used an illustration that was very helpful to me as I was preparing for the message this morning.

39:53 - 40:18 Read in full sermon

Driving home: It's because they fail to recognize the first step to cure sinful anxiety is to stop and realize each day and only one day has its own quota of problems parceled out by the hand of a sovereign God.

He uses the analogy of trying to eat enough on Sunday to last the entire week, calling it ridiculous, to illustrate the spiritual impossibility and foolishness of trying to store up God's grace for future days.

Second thing that we must recognize if we're to be delivered from sinful anxiety is to recognize that each day has its own supply of grace dispensed in that day alone. You see, you can't store up food in your body and say, well, you know, I'm going to be so busy the next week. I think being today Sunday, Sunday being the day of relaxation and rest, I think I'll eat for four or five hours this afternoon and I'm going to eat I'm going to be so busy next week that I won't bother to eat Monday through Friday because if I total up Monday, half an hour at breakfast, half an hour at lunch, half an ho...

42:21 - 43:05 Read in full sermon