JESUS GETS US: GOT THE KING?

Saturday, May 6, will be the historic occasion of the coronation of King Charles III.  This will be done with great pomp, circumstance, and fanfare.  There will be numerous celebrities attending and the “list” being admitted to the “inner circle” will be quite exclusive.  If Jesus were beginning his ministry on earth, he would not be invited.  For the most part Jesus associated with rejects, rebels, and nobodies.  Even his closest disciples were simple fishermen who only had a basic education.   However, even though he is the King, Jesus did not come to rule as an earthly monarch.  His Kingdom will not crumble as all the previous empires of humanity, instead it is eternal.   In our series, Jesus Gets Us, the sermon is Got the King?  We return to the Gospel of Matthew and the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount found in Matthew 6:24-34.  Jesus tells the crowd not to worry.  This sounds wonderful but how do we begin to overcome anxiety?  Maybe Jesus doesn’t get us!  If you read these words carefully, you will see that the source of anxiety is a failure of trust, especially when we fail to trust God!  All of the other things of this world will fail us and we wonder deep in our hearts if God is trustworthy.  Jesus has a simple answer.  All we have to do is look at the birds and the lilies of the field, they can teach us the power of trust and the joy of God’s Kingdom that is coming because the King is here!  Jesus gets us because he is the eternal King who wants to earn our trust. More importantly, this King is worthy of our trust! Trusting in Jesus transforms fear into faith, trauma into trust, and failure into faithfulness.  Are you anxious?  It is our prayer that your trust will be strengthened and your fears will be transformed as you read Matthew 6:24-34:

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. ²⁵ “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? ²⁶ Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷ Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? ²⁸ “And why do you worry about, clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹ Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ³⁰ If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you– you of little faith? ³¹ So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ ³² For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³ But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴ Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. (NIV)