Trinity 15- Matthew 6:24-34

Brothers and sisters, grace and peace to you this morning.

Our Lord says to us in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter six, verse twenty-four: "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."

Now, at first hearing, we might think this is simply a warning about greed — about loving money too much. And certainly that is part of it. But if we sit with this passage a while longer, we find something deeper here, something that touches nearly every one of us in this church this morning. Because right after speaking of masters, Jesus moves immediately into a discourse on anxiety — "Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink."

Do you see the connection He is drawing? Anxiety itself can become a master. Worry can become the thing that rules our hearts, that demands our devotion, that occupies our thoughts morning, noon, and night — more faithfully, if we are honest, than we serve God Himself.

How many of us lie awake at night, not because we love mammon so dearly, but because we fear we will not have enough — fear for our children, our health, our jobs, our future? That fear becomes a kind of master. It sits on the throne of our hearts where God alone should sit. And Jesus tells us plainly: we cannot serve two masters. We cannot bow to both the living God and to the tyranny of worry.

This morning I want us to consider what it looks like to dethrone that anxious master — and to let the true Master, our Father in heaven, take His rightful place. And to help us see this, I want to tell you a story — not from Scripture itself, but in the spirit of the parables our Lord so often told.

Hear now this parable.
There was a certain nobleman who owned a great household, with many rooms and a full storehouse, and fields that stretched beyond the sight of any servant. Before he departed on a long journey, he called his steward to him and said, "I entrust this house to you. All that is needed for its keeping — grain, oil, wine, and provision for every servant under this roof — has already been laid up in the storehouses, and more shall come from the fields in their season. Tend the house faithfully, and want for nothing."

Now this steward was a diligent man, but he was also a fretful man. And no sooner had his master departed than he began to worry. He went down to the storehouse and counted the sacks of grain, and though they were full, he said to himself, "What if the harvest fails? What if the rains do not come?" And he counted them again the next day, and the next, until the counting itself became his labor, and he had no peace in it.

He grew thin with worry. He did not sleep. He walked the halls at night, wringing his hands, going over the accounts again and again by candlelight, though nothing in the accounts had changed. He began to hoard bread that should have gone to the servants, fearing there would not be enough, and so there was want in the house — not because provision was lacking, but because his fear made him withhold what his master had already supplied.

One evening, an old servant of the house, who had served the nobleman many years, found the steward pale and trembling among the grain sacks at midnight.
And she said to him, "Why do you torment yourself? Did not the master himself say that all you would need has already been laid up? Did he not promise more would come in its season? You have made yourself a slave to a fear the master never asked you to carry."

And the steward wept, for he saw that he had spent his strength worrying over what his master had already provided for, and in his anxious counting he had forgotten to simply trust the word of the one who owned the house — and who loved it, and him, far more than he had believed.

Brothers and sisters, are we not sometimes this steward? God has already spoken His promise over our lives. He has already declared, "My grace is sufficient for thee." And yet we walk the halls at midnight, counting and recounting our sacks of grain, as though our worry could add anything to the storehouse, or our fretting could hasten the harvest.

This is precisely what our Lord turns to next in the Gospel. He does not merely tell us not to worry — He shows us why, by pointing to the world around us.
"Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?" And a few verses later: "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."

Think of it, friends. The sparrow does not fret over tomorrow's worm. The lily does not anxiously spin thread for its own petals. And yet look at the glory of the field in springtime — a glory greater than Solomon's royal robes, and it cost the flower no worry at all. It simply grew where it was planted, and the Father clothed it.

This is not a call to laziness — the birds still fly out and gather what is given; the steward in our parable still had real duties to tend. Rather, it is a call to a different posture of the heart. The lily does not doubt the sun will rise. The sparrow does not doubt the worm will be found. Their trust is not naive — it is simply the shape of creatures who know, in whatever way a bird or flower can know, that they belong to a Father who provides.

And Jesus asks us plainly: "Are ye not much better than they?" You, who are made in the image of God — you, for whom Christ suffered and died — are you not of far more value than the sparrow? If the Father clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is cast into the oven, how much more will He clothe you, feed you, provide for you?

Our anxious steward forgot this. He had a master who loved the house more than the steward himself did. And so do we. Our Father is not a distant landlord who might forget the storehouse. He is the very One who filled it, who watches over it, who has numbered even the hairs of our head.

So what, then, shall we do with our worry? Jesus gives us the answer, and it is not merely "stop worrying" — for that alone is often impossible for a troubled heart. Instead, He gives us something to do with our hearts, a place to set them down: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you."

The cure for anxiety is not simply the absence of worry — it is the presence of a greater love, a greater trust, filling the space where worry used to live. We do not empty our hearts of fear by willpower alone. We empty them by filling them with something stronger: the Kingdom of God, sought first, sought above all else.

And then that tender word that closes our passage: "Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." Our Lord is not naive about suffering — He knows each day carries its own trouble. But He asks us to carry only today's portion, not to reach ahead and shoulder tomorrow's burden before it has even arrived.

So this week, friends, when you find yourself counting your sacks of grain at midnight — when the worry comes for your health, your family, your work, your future — remember the steward in the parable, and remember the word of the old servant: "Did not the Master already promise?" Set down what is not yours to carry. Seek first His Kingdom. And trust that the same Father who clothes the lily and feeds the sparrow already knows what you have need of, before you even ask Him.

Let us bring that trust to this altar today, and receive from His hand the Bread that truly does not fail.