Jesus on Anxiety: Timeless Wisdom from Matthew 6

Jesus teaches that anxiety stems from misplaced treasures, poor focus, and lack of trust in God.

### Understanding Anxiety Through Biblical Principles: Jesus as the Great Physician
* 📖 If Jesus were to preach a sermon on anxiety in 2024, he would refer to Matthew chapter 6, emphasizing that **God's word remains timeless** amidst a world seeking novelty.
* ✈ Johnny Aravanis and Hank Bowen discuss their recent experiences, including Johnny's trip to Mexico, while transitioning into the serious topic of **anxiety**.
* 💧 They differentiate between godly care and concern versus ungodly worry, illustrating this with a metaphor about **stagnant water versus flowing streams**, emphasizing the importance of **channeling our burdens to God**.
* 🔍 To address the root causes of anxiety, they reference Matthew 6:19-25, where Jesus asks three critical questions: "**Where is your treasure?**" urging listeners to evaluate what they prioritize in life.
* 💰 The discussion broadens the definition of treasure beyond money to include **anything we place above God**, leading to **anxiety when these treasures are threatened**.
* 👀 The second question, "Where are you looking?" highlights the importance of **what we focus on**, as our gaze can influence our **emotional state** and contribute to **anxiety**.
* 👨 The third question, "Who is your master?" prompts reflection on the influences in our lives, including **bitterness and unconfessed sin**, which can **exacerbate feelings of anxiety**.
* 🙏 Finally, the fourth question, "Who do you believe or trust?" emphasizes the need for a **deep understanding of God's character**, which serves as both a **remedy for anxiety** and a **foundation for faith in times of turmoil**.

I always tell people if Jesus was going to show up on the scene in 2024 and preach a sermon on anxiety, he would have nothing novel and new to say. He would say, Good morning, everybody. Would you take your Bibles and turn with me to Matthew chapter 6? Because this is God's Timeless word. And sometimes in a world that's craving novelty and relevance, we forget and fail to see [Music]. That welcome to di in studios. This is Johnny aravanis. I'm sitting here with Hank Bowen. How you doing, Hank? I'm doing fantastic. The bigger question is, how are you doing after your international travels? You know, I did go to Mexico for a few days, tried to get bronze. It's easier said than done. I was worried based on some of your texts coming back. I was seriously worried we had lost our senior pastor. We are going to plant a church there. Yeah, it's a missional thing exclusively. And uh, I wore a white shirt today. If you're listening, I'm just so

that it would accentuate the contrast of my Olive Greek skin. But moving on to more biblical things, we're talking about the subject of anxiety. In our previous episode, we started to navigate maybe some of the definitions, the terms. You know, I We Begin by talking about how some people say it's just semantics, but in a conversation about anxiety, we wanted to delineate that between care and concern, which can be good and godly things, versus what the Bible describes as an ungodly worry, where legitimate cares and concerns become a lack of trust in who God is. You had given us kind of a helpful metaphor with some water. So basically, water that flows into your soul and doesn't move on, and it begins to almost sour in your soul, and contrasted with kind of flowing streams, is that right? Yeah, we just presented the contrast between what would be a stagnant pool, where we're dwelling on the problems and pressures of life, we're contemplating them, a stagnant pool.

versus a channel where we are casting all of our burdens on God. And so when we pull our anxieties rather than channel them to God, we inevitably become sinfully anxious because our problems are terminating in our s and rather than bringing those to God. And we'll continue to talk about that in this episode, but one of the things that I wanted to do is begin to talk about maybe some of the other recipes for anxiety or we call them root causes for anxiety because Jesus in Matthew 6:25 is going to say, Therefore, do not be anxious. And we already have established that whenever you see the word therefore in the scripture, you ask the question, What's the 'therefore' therefore? Sometimes even in an expositional environment, which means for those of you who may not be familiar with that term, when we're expositing through the scripture, we're taking chunk by chunk and we're moving through the text. But sometimes what may get lost in expositional format is losing the forest for the trees, meaning we forget the passage that immediately

preceded those words because we just teach that section of verses as a standalone passage, but Jesus says, therefore, don't be anxious, and that therefore functions as the culmination and consequence of everything that Jesus had said in the verses prior. And so, in order to understand some of the root causes of anxiety, especially as it relates to our heart and mind as a Christian, we have to go back five verses to Matthew 6:19. And in that section, Jesus says, Do not store up for yourself treasures on Earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal, but store for yourself treasures in Heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroy, and nor thieves do not break in and steal. And as we go through those verses, Matthew 6:19-24, I want to ask really three questions, and then I'll provide a fourth that Jesus, as the Great Physician, is going to ask of you if you're anxious. You come into the doctor's office, and you're not with any

ordinary doctor. You're with the great physician, and great physicians don't just immediately go to the pain point. They begin to ask you questions: Does it hurt here? What about here? What about when I do this or when I do this? And Jesus is going to ask three questions of those who are anxious to consider some of the underlying recipes for anxiety, and the first of which is Where is your treasure? Where is your treasure? Because he says in Matthew 6:19, Do not store for yourself treasures in Heaven. Five verses later, he's going to talk about anxiety. Does that correlation make sense so far? Yeah, I think I'm tracking. And so, the maybe the first question I'd have related to treasure is, Are we talking specifically about money or maybe more broadly? How are you going to define treasure? Yeah, well, treasure is an all-inclusive term. He is talking about money, but he's talking about more than just money. Because we can, you can have a lot of money and yet view your wealth and possessions with an open hand or you

could have very little money and very little, you know, wealth to your name and yet cling to it. And so, he's talking about money, but he could be talking about prestige or reputability or athletics. It could be whatever you have established on the heart's pedestal, which is something you elevate above other things. And so, Jesus, as the great physician, is going to ask you, Where is your treasure? Now, for someone that may be wondering, What does this have to do with anxiety? Let's just, I'll give a story that may help provide some sort of an illustration. Several years back, I had a nagging pain in my foot. As all stories do, they relate back to some physical ailment, physical injury for me. I was limping for a matter of months, and I go into the doctor, and they begin to ask me different questions. And about an hour later, they send me to get an x-ray on my full leg to get some idea of what's happening in my foot. I came back, and the doctor asked me on a

scale of 1 to 10, how much pain are you in? And I said, I don't know, on a scale of one to shark bite, you know, four, but it hurts, man. And he says, well, the X-ray revealed the break. And I'm going, well, obviously my foot, because that's what hurts. And he says, no, and your knee, your patella is broken. And basically had alluded to the reality that over time, I remember hurting my knee but didn't think much of it. But over time, because of the compensation of that, um, basically I was feeling the pain somewhere else. So the pain in my foot was real, but it wasn't the root cause of the pain that I was feeling. That was my knee. And we may be anxious in our minds, but Jesus is saying, well, that may be real, but there is an underlying root, and it begins with what we're treasuring in our hearts. And Jesus is going to illustrate bottom line that whether it be wealth or athletics or reputation or academics or

how people look at you, your own beauty. When we treasure the gift more than the giver himself, we become attached, and our allegiances are driven there rather than to God. And when we elevate those things in our life that are fleeting and fragile and unpredictable, because moths eat and rust destroys and thieves break in and steal, everything in our life that we elevate has the potential to be taken away from us. And so Jesus says when you take a good thing and make it an ultimate thing, that thing becomes a treasure, and whatever you treasure grabs your heart. And whatever is grabbing your heart is ultimately what is going to drive you towards anxiety about that thing or person. Okay, so this is making so we're taking our eyes off the Creator to the created. Yep, we're moving, and fundamentally that's sketchy ground because anything of this Earth is perishable, is the most fundamental point there, absolutely. And so Jesus just very fundamentally just saying, Hey, good things, because remember in a matter of

verses. He's going to talk about food and clothing and relationships. Good things can become idols, and when idols are situated in our heart, they become treasures. And those things drive us towards anxiety and despair because we've elevated them above God himself. And he doesn't stop there. He says, But lay for yourself treasures in heaven where moth don't eat and rust doesn't destroy. But that's the first question. Jesus is the great physician. You're anxious. You've stepped into the doctor's office, and he asked you, Where's your treasure? Where's your treasure? Absolutely. And you have to take an inventory of your life and say, Hey, are the things that I treasure the very things or the very people that are driving me towards anxiety? Good things can become ultimate things, and when ultimate things are situated in our heart, they become our treasures. The second question the great physician asks is, Where are you looking? Because he's going to go from our treasures, and basically, he's going to say the eye

is the lamp of the body, and if the eye is bad, then the whole body is going to be full of darkness. Again, typically, you could preach through this text and totally isolate it from Jesus's sermon on anxiety, but this is right before he says, Therefore, don't be anxious. He's saying the eye is the lamp of the body, and if the eye is bad, the whole body will be full of darkness. The eye is the window into your soul, so Jesus is going to ask you as a great physician, What are you looking at? This is very relevant in a culture that is ever gossiping, ever materialistic, hypersexual, rumor-mongering. People flood their minds and their eyes with information. The average person is looking at their phone seven hours a day. We live in a pornographic world. Even from a secular perspective, you understand the rising link and relationship between porn consumption and anxiety. But whether it's pornography or materialism or coveting things you don't have but you want or whatever beauty, Jesus is saying, Hey, could there

be a relationship between what you're looking at with your eyes and the anxieties within your heart. So, he says, The eye is the lamp of the body. What are you looking at? Because there is often a direct correlation between those two things. Yeah, it makes sense. Well, and to build on your prior point, that which we're gazing at and kind of meditating and stewing upon is likely also going to become the treasure, back to your first question. And so, I'm seeing the connection here. Keep going. You give us a third question. Yeah, and then one just other thing to add is that it doesn't necessarily have to be sins of commission with our eyes. It could be sins of omission because we're called to take every thought captive that we might honor God. And often, what we're looking at, if it's not explicitly sinful, it could be explicitly neutral, but it robs us of fixating our gaze on who God is, which is the very anchor we need in a world of turbulence and chaos. And so, where are you looking? Doesn't

have you don't have to think of bad movies and bad shows. It could just be something that distracts you from looking towards God and His character. The third question the great physician asks is, Who is your master? Because Jesus says one verse prior to, Therefore don't be anxious in Matthew 6:25. In Matthew 6:24, He says, No one can serve two masters. He will either hate the one and love the other, or despise the one. And so, the third question the great physician asks is, Who is your master? Who is your master? Uh, I think sometimes in we look at this verse from a very literal sense, you know, like, I have no master. Um, but we could be mastered by a myriad of different things that would contribute and cause different elements of anxiety and despair. A couple examples of that would be, you know, sometimes when I talk to people who are anxious, and even in my own heart, and if you've read Corey T. Boom's biography, she was really battling anxiety and despair. She spent, you know, long seasons in concentration camps. She

watched her sister Betsy die in a concentration camp, and she would say that one of the contributing factors for her anxiety was that she was mastered by bitterness. Because bitterness, it says in Hebrews 12, let no root of bitterness spring up within you, that many be defiled. Bitterness is a corrosive that deteriorates your soul. And so when Jesus, as the great physician, says, Who is your master? you could say, I have no master but God, and yet at the same time be mastered by bitterness and a lack of forgiveness. That contributes, in Corrie ten Boom's biography, to the anxiety within her because she was failing to let go of other people's sin against her, which only fueled and perpetuated her own worry, anxiety, and despair. Absolutely. It's helpful because it just strikes me, hearing you speak through these, are things that are like supremely understandable from an earthly perspective. I mean, a victim of con... You why they would be to bitter and

it's only the miracle of the Gospel that could set you free from something so imprisoning like that. Yeah, and so, yeah, it's very obviously too when Jesus is asking these questions. This is God's Timeless word, and so I always tell people if Jesus was going to show up on the scene in 20124 and preach a sermon on anxiety, he would have nothing novel and new to say. He would say, Good morning, everybody. Would you take your Bibles and turn with me to Matthew chapter 6? Because this is God's Timeless word, and sometimes in a world that's craving novelty and relevance, we forget and fail to see that. So Jesus asked those questions, you know, where, uh, you know, who is your master, and have you been mastered by bitterness. And I think another one would be, um, that is a large contributing factor to anxiety just from a Biblical perspective, is have you been mastered by unconfessed sin. Uh, David says, and we've talked about this I think elsewhere, David says in Psalm 32.

When he kept silent about his sin, he felt as if his body was wasting away and as if he was being drained by the fever heat of summer. Unconfessed sin is a massive load upon your soul that produces anxiety and despair, and you are simply not strong enough to bear the massive load of unconfessed sin without being crippled by anxiety. That may be the anxiety of being found out, or it could just be the deprivation of fellowship, if you're a Christian, that you have with your heavenly Father. You can't lose your salvation, but you can lose your joy, your peace, and really the serenity and peace of a clean conscience. And so that would be just another example of have you been mastered by unconfessed sin, and does that have a contributing, maybe root cause to the anxiety you may be facing. Yeah, and that's, I think you're referencing, we did a prior episode on confession specifically, and again, just repeating back to you, but it's such an

obvious fact that the opposite of anxiety would be joy, or the inverse of joy would so easily be understood as anxiety. Yeah, and when we're confessing sin, it renews the right relationship between God, the Father of a totally clean spirit and conscience, that would allow us to approach our daily lives. And that's what David prays for in Psalm 51, you know. Yeah, I want a clean conscience, God. Purge me with hyssop. Yeah, absolutely. Um, so that would be the third question, but I think there's a fourth, and that's what gets played out over the remaining verses of Matthew chapter 6. And it's really the theme of God's response to every anxious individual throughout the scripture. And that fourth question is, who do you believe, or who do you trust? Um, because in that following section, Jesus is going to say in Matthew 6, therefore don't be anxious. But he doesn't stop there. He doesn't say just snap out of it, cut it out. He's gonna draw their attention to the

character of their Heavenly Father because he's going to say, Don't be anxious. And then he says in Matthew 6:30, Like the Gentiles who do not know God. And then he says, Oh, you of little faith. Faith that ultimately, the underlying recipe and the underlying cause for ungodly worry and anxiety is a failure to fix our gaze and exercise our faith in who God is. And if it's part of the root cause for anxiety, it's also, as the great physician Jesus is going to explain, part of the remedy. Part of the remedy, and the remedy in scripture is that if you're anxious, Jesus is going to then over the next series of episodes, we'll cover, and over the next series of verses in Matthew 6, begin to lift our gaze towards a deep consideration, meditation, rumination, whatever Asian you want to talk about on the character of God. And he's going to say, Hey, consider the birds, consider the lilies. Do they take care of themselves? And then he begins to lift up their gaze towards the character

of God. This is how God responded to Job in the Old Testament when Job was anxious to Elijah, to Moses, and to these followers on the mount 2,000 years ago. Jesus is going to ask the question, Who is your father? And sometimes I think we look at the character of God through a depersonalized lens. And so, if the antidote to our anxiety is to know God's character deeply, Jesus wants to anchor that truth not in just the reality that God is the king of the universe or the creator of the universe, but he's the father of you as his child. And we'll begin to draw specific attributes and characteristics of who God is as our father that provide the believer, the anxious believer, the anxious individual with comfort, peace, um, and encouragement. And then, even when necessary, Jesus is going to rebuke the littleness of our faith, not the absence of it, because a lot of our anxiety, Jesus is going to detail, is that we have a deficient and deprived inadequate view of who God is.

and if that's the problem, then that's the remedy. We need a deeper view of his character. Yeah, absolutely. And so this is, in many ways, we're finally to kind of the core thrust of the entire book more broadly, which is consider the lies, subtext, find perfect peace in the character of God. Yeah, um, and that's the theme in scripture, and that's the theme of really the heart that wants to trust the Lord is, uh, as I face the uncertainties in this life, the chaos of this life, the trials and troubles in this life, what you need more than anything is a deep understanding of the character of God. But not just an understanding, an exercise. That's why I refer to Faith throughout the book. I think it was Oswald Chambers who refers to Faith as a fixation of your gaze, because faith is not a thing, faith is an action. And so I think sometimes we say, Well, I believe God, um, but it's a totally different thing to exercise that Faith constantly and to deeply consider, because consider is an active word. And so we're going to

draw out those attributes and those specific characteristics of who God is as our father that provide us with the comfort and courage we need in a world of anxiety and despair. Yeah, well, I'm really looking forward to the next coming episode. So, thanks for sitting down, Jenny. Thanks, Hank. [Music]

Anxious? Jesus Asks You These Three Questions - Jonny Ardavanis

Dial In Ministries

Addressing Anxiety: A Biblical Perspective

The discussion centers on the timelessness of Jesus' teachings, particularly in Matthew 6, regarding anxiety.

The hosts differentiate between godly care and concern versus ungodly worry, using the metaphor of stagnant water versus flowing streams to illustrate the importance of casting burdens on God.

They explore the root causes of anxiety, emphasizing the need to store treasures in Heaven rather than on Earth, and plan to pose reflective questions to the audience.

The Connection Between Treasure and Anxiety

Jesus addresses anxiety by asking, "Where is your treasure?" Treasures encompass more than just money; they include prestige, reputation, and other elevated values.

By treasuring fleeting and fragile things, we become attached and driven away from God, leading to anxiety when those things are threatened.

The Great Physician's Questions on Anxiety

Jesus addresses the relationship between treasures, anxiety, and despair, urging people to lay up treasures in heaven.

He emphasizes the importance of what we are looking at, as the eye is the lamp of the body, and warns that a bad eye can lead to darkness.

The correlation between our gaze and our anxieties is highlighted, suggesting that what we focus on can drive us away from fixing our eyes on God.

Jesus asks three important questions related to anxiety: what distracts you from God, who is your master, and are you being mastered by bitterness or unconfessed sin? Bitterness, as highlighted in Corrie ten Boom's biography, can contribute to anxiety and despair.

Jesus' timeless message in Matthew 6 emphasizes the importance of recognizing our true master and letting go of things that imprison us, like bitterness and unconfessed sin.

The Burden of Unconfessed Sin and Anxiety

Unconfessed sin creates a heavy burden on the soul, leading to anxiety and despair.

This anxiety can stem from the fear of being found out or from a lack of fellowship with God.

Jesus teaches that the remedy for anxiety lies in fixing our gaze on the character of God and trusting in Him.

Understanding God's Character as a Source of Comfort

Jesus emphasizes the importance of knowing God's character deeply, presenting Him as a loving father to provide comfort and peace to anxious individuals.

The book highlights the need for a deeper understanding of God's attributes to combat anxiety and encourages exercising faith as an active response.

The core theme is to trust in God's character amidst life's uncertainties and challenges.