Sermon - Trinity 15, 2026 - Matthew 6:24-34

Prophet Elijah and the Widow of Sarepta, Bernardo Strozzi, 1630

Your Heavenly Father Knows what you need, so seek first His Kingdom

1. The situation: The anxiety of the daily grind can be all consuming

2. The reality: Our heavenly Father knows all our needs and gives us all things

3. The reorientation: Therefore, seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and God will provide the rest

“Do not be anxious about your life.” You would think given the extreme levels of comfort and ease that we enjoy in our country today that we would have very low rates of anxiety. But it’s the direct opposite. This is, as some call it, the anxious generation. This has largely been driven by the digital age, and over the past two decades rates of anxiety are through the roof, especially among young people. However it’s not just the young, not just those addicted to screens, but many feel anxious and worried about any number of things.

A lot of our anxiety today is not related to basic necessities being left unmet. We’re not really that similar to the widow in Zarephath who has just a smidgen of food left before starving to death. Our anxiety is often connected to our screens, where we see lots of images of other people, but we don’t get the experience of being with those other people and being seen by those other people. Our anxiety is also often connected to our level of busyness necessary to maintain the complexity of our modern lives.

In this way the daily grind of life and the ensuing anxiety can be all consuming. Keeping up with the errands you need to run, getting all of your work accomplished, fulfilling your volunteer obligations, running this way and that for events in opposite directions. Never an empty moment, but every second is filled either with work, play, or entertainment until your head hits the pillow. Then in those quiet moments when your mind can finally think, it spirals into worry and anxiety; regret about the past and worry for the future.

Yet our Lord says: “Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on… your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.” Indeed, your heavenly Father, the almighty God of all creation, knows your every need and promises to give you all things at the proper time. The reality is that all of the things which you concern yourself with, God will take care of, and you don’t really even have any control over any of these things anyways. The birds of the air don’t have any control over the worms and the bugs and the seeds that they eat. The lilies of the field don’t control where they grow or how their flowers form. All of these things are in God’s hands.

Likewise, the goods that we have all belong to the Lord. All that we have is God’s and we are stewards of these things. Your money, your time, your health, your body, your possessions, your everything belongs to the Lord, and He gives you all things to use according to His will, because you are but stewards of these treasures. Thus, because it all belongs to the Lord, because nothing is from our own hands, that means God is going to provide for us according to His good and gracious will, and we don’t need to fill ourselves with anxiety over these things. 

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves and assume that this means we will never be in need and we will always have everything we want and be perfectly comfortable and nourished. Elijah and the widow of Zarephath had flour and oil to eat, so basically some bland crackers, and if they were to eat this exclusively for some time they would be extremely malnourished and die in probably less than a year. This isn’t to mention all of the other widows in Israel whom God didn’t miraculously feed with neverending crackers. Or Jesus mentions the birds of the air. What do little birds eat typically? Worms, seeds, bugs, some inedible berries. Or what about the flowers of the field? They last for a day and then get thrown into the oven. 

Jesus’ promise about knowing our needs and having a heavenly Father who will give us the things that we need to survive isn’t a guarantee that we will always be happy, healthy, and wealthy. But it means that we are like Elijah, the widow of Zarephath, birds, and grass and we are entirely dependent on God to provide us with the things that we need. If all of our toiling doesn’t add even a single hour to our span of life, because it’s all in God’s hands and not in our hands, then it means we need not be anxious and worry about these things. God is going to give us what is necessary, none of our toiling will change that.

It’s also important to recognize that this isn’t an excuse to be lazy and slothful. Perhaps we can be tempted to think that if God provides all things for us anyways, we should just quit working. But that’s not what God created us to be. God made the birds to be scavengers, He made the flowers to grow, and He made us to work. God set Adam and Eve in the garden to work it and keep it, even before the Fall into sin; God placed us in this world to eat bread by the sweat of our brow and by the thorns of the field. God has created us to labor, not to be lazy.

But the birds are a great reminder to us of the foolishness of our anxious toiling. It’s comical really, in a middle school humor sort of way, even. The birds are scavengers, but they are scavengers of plants that often are planted by the seeds in their droppings. That’s how God feeds the birds! It’s kind of silly, but then again any time you talk about birds and flowers it’s kind of whimsical and silly anyways. You can’t take the labors of the birds and the flowers too seriously. And neither should we take our labors and toilings too seriously; the anxiety and importance we place on our work is not worth it, because it’s not about us, but about the Lord who graciously gives us all things apart from our burdensome labors.

Thus, since we have no need to exert our worry and anxiety over these worldly things, because our heavenly Father will provide for us, we need a reorientation. Instead of the worldly anxiety, let us shift our attention, and seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, because God will provide the rest. There are actually more important things than all of the stuff we normally think is so important, namely, the things of the Lord.

This is why it’s such an important thing to begin the first day of every week, Sunday, here in the Divine Service, thinking about things above and not things below. Because our weeks are filled with so much distraction and worry about the things of this world, we need a weekly reorientation. You need your sins of the past week absolved, and you need to go forward in the righteousness of Christ. You need to remember that you are spiritual, and this world is passing away like the grass thrown into the oven.

The service begins by reciting the very words that declare us to be God’s children. Today Avery was sealed with the sign of the holy cross over his mind and his heart, he was made God’s child through water and the word, when God’s name was placed upon him in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Because Avery is not just a child of Logan and Cathy, but he’s a child of his heavenly Father. That divine name is recited each Divine Service, we make the sign of the cross over ourselves because we are returning to our baptism and remembering that God is our Father who promises to provide everything for us.

Each day you need to mark this same pattern. Wake up in the morning and make the sign of the holy cross over yourself in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Do this because everything you do all day every day is spiritual, and is done in the name of the Lord. God goes with you and He works through you and for you. Your labors are not for man but for God. All of your labors should not only serve your belly, but serve the Lord, and they should be done for the sake of your eternal righteousness. Whatever you do, let it serve the primary purpose of life, which is to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. If anything is getting in the way of that, then cast it aside, it’s only unnecessary worry.

All of the anxiety that fills your life, whenever you feel overwhelmed and exhausted, remember that your heavenly Father knows all that you need. Praise Him, for He is your health and salvation! Blessed are you whose help is the Lord, whose hope is in the Lord his God. The Lord frees the oppressed, He opens the eyes of the blind. He lifts up those who are bowed down; He loves the righteous. He watches over the sojourner, upholds the widow and the fatherless, and He brings the wicked to ruin. He shall reign forever over all generations. Blessed are you who are children of your heavenly Father.