Faith Beyond Worry

This sermon was preached by Pastor Ted Carnahan for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost on August 10, 2025.

Grace, mercy, and peace be with all of you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

"Be not afraid. Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink or wear."

Likely story, Jesus.

Let's face it, you and I are good at worrying. I mean, actually, if you think about it for a second, I as your pastor am a professional worrier. I engage in taking care, not just of myself, my family, but also I worry about all of you. And I do a lot of that.

It's easy for us to think that if we just worry hard enough, if we just focus ourselves on our own needs enough, that that will guarantee that we have all the things that we need and it will set all things right and it brings everything into our control. And of course, we know that's really not true.

Because "life is more than food and the body is more than clothing." Yes, these things are important. It's not unimportant that we have enough, that we have enough food, something to wear, that we have a roof over our heads. These things are all good.

In fact, we pray for them regularly. You should be praying for them at least daily as you pray the Lord's Prayer, especially when you get to the part where it says, "Give us this day our daily bread."

Understanding Daily Bread

This daily bread that we ask for is not simply a loaf of bread. Just food and drink, but it's all the things that we need for our bodily life.

This is how Martin Luther teaches us in his Small Catechism. He says that these are things that encompass wider needs that we need in order for our good that go beyond just the bodily needs of food and drink that extend beyond that to things like:

• A good and decent spouse
• Good neighbors
• A good reputation
• Even good government (Lord, grant us that, please!)

And yet we cling to this idea that somehow it's by our work, our struggle, our worry that makes all these things come into our hands.

Lessons from Nature

And Jesus comes into that moment and reminds us over and over and over again that life is more than food, the body is more than clothing, and he invites us to consider the lilies.

Not in some haphazard way, not in some let's go walking, and through the tulips. But he says, look at the beautiful things around you, not as an example of perfection, but just as an example of the things in his life which God has put there for your good.

Look at the example of the lilies. What do they do? How hard do they work? Of course they don't. Consider the lilies, they neither toil nor spin. They're not out busy raising sheep to make wool and spinning it into yarn and weaving it into cloth. God has clothed them with abundant beauty and they do nothing at all to earn or deserve it. He says, consider the ravens. God always feeds them.

The Difficulty of Faith

This is the challenge for us limited, finite, mortal, fallible, broken human beings. It's so easy for us to say, if I just hold more tightly to the things around me, if I just concentrate more carefully on the things which provide for me, if I do what is necessary to worry about my life and I do it enough, hard enough, often enough, with enough diligence of effort and focused attention, I will be okay.

And just like our reading last week said, perhaps tonight your life is demanded of you. We do not know when it is that God will demand our life of us, just as the owner of the house does not know when the robber will come in and break in and steal.

We are to be ready. Ready for what? Not for the coming of a thief, but for the coming of the bridegroom, our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is the essence of faith. "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."

And one of the things that I really love about our readings today is that they all point us to this idea of faith. Because faith goes beyond simply our holding on to doing the right things at the right time with enough concentrated attention and will. And it pushes us to realize our dependence upon God. It's so easy for us to think that we can do all these things ourselves.

Abraham's Example of Faith

If I ask you, what is the most significant summary of the Bible? What verse is that? I bet I can guess. In fact, go ahead and just say it out loud. You all know it? What do you think it is? John 3:16? Yes, everybody's heads are nodding. Yes, John 3:16. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son."

I agree with you. That is the best summary of what the New Testament says. What do you suppose might be the Old Testament version of that same idea? I would contend that we find it today in Genesis chapter 15, verse 6. "And Abram believed the Lord and it was reckoned to him as righteousness."

Imagine to be a man of that age, 98, 99 years old, and he goes to God and he has a deep need. His need is not food or drink, but it is the need to continue to exist into the future. It's the need for his name and his family to continue for the possessions which he's acquired over a long life to pass it into the hands of his own offspring, his own heir.

And after all the things that he's done in this life, he doesn't have that. And at his age, he has reached the point where he realizes that that is the most important thing to him, and yet he believes that it's beyond his power to have it anymore.

He had trusted God for 25 some odd years at this point, since the initial beginning of that covenant that God made between himself and Abram. And so he complains to God in Genesis today. He says, but Abram says, "O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless?" And the heir of my house is this guy in Damascus, Eliezer.

What is it that I'm supposed to depend on you for when the only thing that I care to depend on you for is a future that I cannot control and that you don't seem to have provided?

And God takes him out and has him look up at the night sky and he says, "Count the stars, so numerous shall your descendants be."

And here's the key: think about how ridiculous a promise that is! Think of how absurd it is for Abram to look up into the sky as a man who is 98, 99 years old counting the stars and believing in that moment, though he has no children of his own, nor does he have any children by his wife nevertheless, he shall be the father of so many nations that the number of his descendants outnumbers the stars in the sky!

And yet faith is the assurance of things hoped for and he has hoped beyond hope. Faith is the conviction of things not seen.

In that moment something remarkable happens, he hears the promise of God and it transforms his heart. He looks at his limited situation that he can do nothing of his own to fix. He's an old man. His wife is an old woman. It has ceased to be with her after the way of women.

In other words: babies aren't happening here, folks.

And yet he looks up into the sky and he believes. "Abram believed God and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness." He believed the promise. He had faith in the impossible thing that God had promised he would do. And God blessed him and accounted it to him as righteousness.

The Turning Point and God's Faithfulness

This is the crux, the crossing point, the turning point of the whole Bible and everything that follows after this:

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, the people going into Egypt to flee the famine. Getting enslaved by the Egyptians and being led out into the promised land by Moses and Aaron and Joshua. The time of the judges, the time of the kings, the oppression of the Assyrians and Babylonians and the Romans. And then the birth of the Savior, the Messiah, Jesus Christ.

All of these things turn on one moment and it happens in Genesis 15:6. And as righteousness, he trusts the Word of God and it changes the course of human history.

And God is faithful and God does provide. So that all these who then follow, follow in the footsteps of Abraham. All of these who trusted God by faith continue to live as he did, not because the promise makes sense on its face. It's absurd, but because we trusted anyway.

Now here comes Jesus, teaching in the sermon on the plain in Luke. And he says, "Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or your body, what you will wear." And he tells you, "Life is more than food. And the body is more than clothing."

Then he points to the lilies and to the ravens. And on its face, that's absurd. Because of course, we have to worry about these things. Be not afraid. Jesus, are you kidding?

And to you, he bids you go out and "count the stars" and believe the promise that if God so clothes the grass with beauty and provides for it, so much more will he provide for you, O you of little faith.

That when you are afraid or worried that God is distant or far off or disconnected from your life, the God who created the universe steps in and says, "Do not worry because I have you."

He then says to us, "Be ready." Be looking for my return. Be prepared to greet me as I come. Trust me above all other things.

And when I come and find you well prepared, I will wrap my belt around me and I will get down on my knees and serve you, says the Lord.

And things will be inverted as they are every time we gather for worship. Because we who would come and bring worship and praise to God instead receive a divine service as he comes to you in the word preached and proclaimed and read as he comes to you in the font and at the altar.

Yes, you must be ready for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour. Because you must trust that promise that Jesus Christ who died and rose and ascended into heaven is coming again. And that when he comes, he will make all things right.

That when we look in the world and we feel as if that promise that God gives us that we will have everything we truly need is empty. He bids you to pray, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. Give us this day our daily bread and trust that he will.

And that at the end of time he will come and wipe all tears from every eye.

May you trust this promise that our Lord has made everything necessary for you. Yes, for your life, for your body and your spirit, but also for your soul. He gives you his salvation and blessing. He pours it out for you in baptism. He feeds you with it at the table. He ministers to your spirit so that you may have the peace that comes from trusting God's promise into the future.

Knowing that all the things you truly need will be provided. And may this peace, which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds strong in Christ Jesus our Lord to life everlasting. Amen.