Who You Are Shapes Tomorrow | Nate Sala | Matthew 6:25-33

Good morning, everyone. It's my privilege to be with you. I'm so grateful to Pastor Robbie and for the team to invite me back. Today I want to talk and wrestle with a question with you that dominates our thoughts as a people. This is a question that we are thinking about as a society, but also as individuals. We wake up thinking about this question, and we go to bed with it on our minds. What is going to happen in the future? Now, if you're a Christian, the question is probably going to sound more like this. What is God's will for my life? Has anybody ever asked that before? Just me, huh? Has anybody ever asked that before? A few of you. Now, on the surface, that question feels like it's a very spiritual one to ask. It feels humble and even responsible to ask that question. But I want you to just sit with that for just a moment and think. When you ask that question, what are you actually asking? Are you asking for information? Or are you asking for transformation? Now, in reality, what we are thinking about when we ask this particular question is, what job am I going to get, right?

Which city am I going to live in? Which college am I going to attend? Which person am I going to marry? Am I going to be a YouTuber or a pastor, if you're like me? Underneath all of that, there's usually a quiet fear that goes along with it, too, right? What if one wrong choice puts me outside God's will for my life, and I spend the next decade trying to recover? Friends, today, I want to show you that in his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus is answering this question. But he's going to do it in a totally different way than we are normally used to, all right? As a matter of fact, once you understand what Jesus teaches here, it's going to completely change the way that you look at your future. Open your Bibles with me to Matthew chapter 6, if you brought your Bibles, hopefully. If not, it's going to be on the screen, and we're going to start in verse 25. This is Jesus speaking. Matthew 6, 25. Therefore, I tell you, don't worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Isn't life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Consider the birds of the sky. They don't sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren't you worth more than they?

Can any of you add one moment to his lifespan by worrying? And why do you worry about clothes? Observe how the wildflowers of the field grow. They don't labor or spin thread, yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was adorned like one of these. If that's how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and thrown into the furnace tomorrow, won't he do much more for you, you of little faith? So don't worry, saying, what will we eat or what will we drink or what will we wear, for the Gentiles eagerly seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you. Amen. The Sermon on the Mount is very familiar to a lot of us. This is the moment where Jesus imparts the wisdom of heaven to a great crowd. This crowd was probably hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of people, and Jesus is standing on a hilltop overlooking the Sea of Galilee. We often tread through this sermon as we read our scriptures, and so we're very familiar with it. Today I wanna show you a couple of things that you might not know about it. All right, for example, did you know that Jesus may not have intended

to speak directly to the entire crowd? Did you know that? If you go back to Matthew 5, verses one and two, you'll see that the crowds gather, but Jesus does not acknowledge them at all when they show up. As a matter of fact, much of what Jesus says appears to be directed at his disciples. And so, in other words, it probably makes better sense to say that Jesus is directly teaching his disciples, and the crowds all around them are listening in on what that sounds like. Did you know that? Here's another example, something interesting. Did you know that Jesus highlights two characters, two types of people in his Sermon on the Mount? There is a veritable protagonist, and there is an antagonist, and the crowd is supposed to choose which type of person that they wanna become. The protagonist is the true disciple of Jesus Christ. This is the one who spreads the kingdom of heaven here on earth. The antagonist is. Not an atheist like Alex O'Connor, or somebody like Richard Dawkins, or somebody like that. This antagonist is actually somebody who's very religious. As a matter of fact, in many cases, you would look at these two particular individuals

on the street, maybe, and you wouldn't even be able to tell the difference between the two. Did you know that? The antagonist is actually somebody who obeys God on the outside, but on the inside, they are far from him in their heart. Jesus calls these people hypocrites. Here's one more thing. Did you know that the Sermon on the Mount is teaching you about how to understand God's will for your life? And I'm gonna show it to you. There are three principles to see this morning, so if you take notes, I encourage you to write this down. Here's the first one. You ready? Worry reveals your treasure. Look again in verse 25 with me. Jesus says this, therefore, I tell you, don't worry about your life. Okay, stop right there. Notice Jesus begins with the word therefore. That means that he is connecting this particular command to something that he has previously said. Now, a great question, a Bible study question to ask at this point is, well, what was the thing that Jesus previously said, right? Well, if you look back a few verses, Jesus has been talking about treasure. Watch this, Matthew 6, verse 19.

Don't store up for yourselves treasures on earth. Then in verse 21, he says, for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Then Jesus goes on to talk about the eye. You remember this? Verse 22, the eye is the lamp of the body. If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light. And then Jesus talks about masters. Verse 24, no one can serve two masters. You cannot serve both God and money. And then Jesus says, therefore, I tell you, don't worry about your life. The point is, there is a connective thread here, friends. Jesus does not say these things randomly. These things are all interconnected. You have treasure, vision, mastery, therefore, don't worry about your life. In other words, worry reveals your treasure. Can you see that? Worry reveals your vision of the world around you. Worry reveals what master you are actually serving. You guys with me? You can talk to me. You guys with me? You tracking me? Now, to be clear, I'm not saying that every single anxious thought that you've ever had in your entire life is automatically wicked, okay?

I don't even think that's what Jesus is doing here. But what is clear is that Jesus is confronting the kind of worry that comes from a misplaced trust. This is an illusion, that life can be secured apart from the Father. That's why he asks, isn't life more than food and the body more than clothing? He's asking whether life itself is more than the things that we are so desperately trying to secure in our daily lives. This reminds me, so one of my favorite television shows of all time is The Twilight Zone. Does anybody, you know what I'm talking about? The Twilight Zone? This is where I date myself and everybody, they figure out how old I am. Rod Sterling with the suit and tie, the cigarette, the creepy music, the grandfather clock floating in outer space. The young people are like, what's going on right now? Well, one of the best episodes, in my opinion, it involves some astronauts that crashed onto an asteroid. Pretty crazy right at the get-go. And when they crash, I mean, these, the ship just breaks apart. So the astronauts do not expect to survive. As a matter of fact, the survivors of this spaceship, they exit this broken ship and they just go out onto this asteroid searching for anything that might increase their chances of survival.

Now it's a pretty crazy episode because one by one, these men, they start turning on themselves and they start killing each other as they fight over the last bit of water and supplies. And then finally, at the very end of the episode, the last survivor decides, I'm just gonna trek it. So he walks all the way across the desert sand of this asteroid. He makes it to the foot of some kind of mountain. He climbs all the way to the top of the mountain, gets over the other side of it, and that's when he sees a paved road and a sign that says Reno, Nevada. See, the astronauts thought that they had landed on an asteroid when they never left Earth. See, this is what I'm talking about, ladies and gentlemen. When we ask, what is God's will for my life? A lot of times we're asking. for the wrong thing. Why? Because we're not seeing our situation correctly. What we want, if we're being really honest with ourselves, is we want God to relieve the burden of trusting in him by giving us the illusion of control. And how do we gain this control? Information. God, tell me what is going to happen in the future. God, which job am I going to take? Which opportunity is going to present itself? Which person am I going to marry, right?

Which path should I take? We are treating our destiny like it's a destination, a particular point on some kind of divine map. And if that's the case, then our job is basically to get a glimpse of this secret map so that we know how to get from point A today to point B tomorrow. That's not it at all, ladies and gentlemen. Jesus is defining our destiny right here in Matthew 6, if we have the eyes to see it, amen? Worry reveals our treasure. That leads to the second principle. Worry cannot win tomorrow. Watch this, look at verse 27 again. Jesus says, can any of you add one moment to his lifespan by worrying? Spoiler alert, the answer is no. And that's why, I think that's why this hits so hard. See, a lot of us in here, we like to run through and rehearse all possible scenarios and outcomes. Is anybody like me? This is what I do, right? We think, we imagine the disasters, and then we run through it. We mentally suffer through enough possible futures, then somehow we think because we've done all of this, now we're ready for it, whatever happens, right? Jesus says, none of that can add a single hour to your life. The bottom line is, worry is the mind's attempt to control a future that only the Father can govern.

And that's where Jesus points us to creation. Look at verse 26, consider the birds of the sky. They don't sow or reap or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren't you worth more than they? Again, the answer is yes, you are. You are the pinnacle of the kingdom of God. You are the pinnacle of God's creation. At the bottom of Genesis one, it says that God made human beings unlike any other creature in his own image, and behold, it was very good, right? Consider the birds of the sky. By the way, you ever see a bird shaking a magic eight ball? You know what I'm getting at? You ever see a bird just so thoroughly stressed out with analysis paralysis, right? Just hovering over a branch saying, I don't know, man. I don't know, dude. God's not telling me what to do here, bro. I don't know, I'm low-key freaking out right now, dude. It's the big one, Elizabeth. Sanford and Sons. What, some of you, what is Jesus pointing out here? Because what he's not saying is don't work, don't plan ahead, don't be responsible. That's not what he's saying, because if that was what he was saying, that would be taking back some of the clear scripture that teaches us to do these very things.

No, what Jesus is saying is your heavenly father already knows the future that you cannot see, and more than that, he governs the whole thing. He controls it from start to finish, and if you really let that sink down deep, that should comfort you. It should comfort you. Doesn't matter what your situation is. Doesn't matter what you're looking at right now. Maybe you came in here today with a lot on your shoulders, you know? You're basically, some of you, you're basically at the end of your rope. You are white-knuckling your way through your life at this particular moment in time, and I know because I've been there. You don't know where to turn. Your back is up against the wall. You have nowhere to go. This is exactly where God wants you, friends. Listen to him speak to you today. Put it this way, the future is not hanging by the thread of your brilliant decision-making. The future is not hanging by the thread of your ability to worry about it either. Too many of us are missing the formula that Jesus gives us in the Sermon on the Mount about how to understand our future. Worry cannot win tomorrow. And that brings us to the last principle.

Who you are shapes tomorrow. We're gonna camp out here for the rest of the time. Who you are shapes tomorrow. In verse 33, Jesus says this, but seek first the kingdom of God and his. righteousness, and his righteousness, and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you, hmm. Notice what Jesus did not say, because he could have said a lot of stuff, right? Jesus does not say, decipher tomorrow, figure it out. He does not say, ask God about what's going to happen next year, go and try and find that secret blueprint of God's will for your life. He doesn't say any of that. As a matter of fact, it appears that Jesus is not at all concerned with giving us tomorrow's details. Instead, he answers worry by giving us today's priority. Seek first God's kingdom and his righteousness. And there it is, Jesus just answered the question that I posed to you at the beginning. It's right there. Okay, let's zoom out, okay? I think this point will become clear if we just look at this from a different angle altogether. So a moment ago, I said that Matthew 6 is connected. You remember this? Guess what, the entire sermon is interconnected. Matthew 5, 6, and 7 is interconnected. Jesus, throughout the entire sermon, is describing the kind of person

who belongs in the kingdom of heaven. He starts off the whole sermon, watch this, by focusing on your character. Did you know that? This is what we call the Beatitudes. Listen to, I'm gonna go through them very quickly. Listen to how he says it, Matthew 5, 3. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Blessed are those who mourn. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. Ask yourself, what is Jesus teaching us here? Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed are the peacemakers. Did you notice a pattern? What Jesus is not doing is, he's not focused on external accomplishments so much as, what he's doing is, he's identifying dispositions. He's highlighting and calling out the internal condition of the heart that he desires in his disciples. This is what kingdom spreaders look like. All over the world, wherever God has placed them, this is what they should look like. They should look like the Beatitudes. They should look like they have these qualities of character, all right? And notice what's attached to these kinds of folks. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

They shall inherit the earth. They shall see God. These kinds of people, according to Jesus, will inherit the future because of their formation today. You guys still with me? Now, some have noticed that the Beatitudes appear structured in a way that places blessed are the merciful right at the center, just of the Beatitudes. It's right there at the center, okay? If that's correct, then mercy is not random. Jesus is not making mercy some kind of random quality that exists in a person's heart. This becomes the theme or the big idea of the entire Beatitudes. It's mercy. Why does Jesus do that? It's because he knows something. See, mercy actually changes the way a person sees the whole world. Think about that. How you see the world determines how you respond to particular opportunities, right? As a matter of fact, depending on the way that you see the world, you will either be blind to the opportunities around you or you will see opportunities when no one else does. Amen? Because I'm like, do you understand what I'm doing? I'm answering the question.

The question that I started at the very beginning was what does the future look like for you? Jesus says, blessed are the merciful. Now watch this. Matthew 6 is where Jesus moves into the concepts of giving, praying, and fasting. And in Matthew 6, right in the center there is the Lord's Prayer. Now what's interesting here is the Lord's Prayer, as it turns out, appears to be the center of the entire sermon, okay? Now I'm gonna go through it and I want you to ask, what, as I read the prayer, what is this prayer doing to my heart? Okay, listen to this. Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy. When you pray this prayer with all sincerity, what's going on in you? Think about this. Your reverence is being formed. Isn't it? Jesus is reshaping the characteristics of reverence in your heart. Can you see it? See that? Verse 10, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. There's your ambition being reshaped by the prayer, right? Give us today our daily bread. That's your dependence being realigned.

So again, what's going on in this prayer? The answer is your character is being molded into the shape of a kingdom spreader. Verse 12, and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. Hey, there's mercy again, right? So the center of the Beatitudes just found its way into the center of the whole entire sermon. What's going on there? Verse 13, and do not bring us into temptation but deliver us from the evil one. This is where your moral vigilance is being shaped by the prayer. All right? Now again, notice what's missing from this prayer. God, what is going to happen in the future? Lord, can you reveal to me what your will is for my life? Right? There is absolutely no request for clarity about the future, which job you should take, which spouse you should marry, which city you should live in, nothing. The prayer is not revealing your future, it is reforming you as a person, if you let it. So at this point, I'm just trying to show you how this whole sermon sort of fits together, okay? I got one more thing for you. In Matthew 7, Jesus closes with, watch this, two gates, two trees, and two houses, okay? Now I'm gonna read verse 24, and I just want you to picture this in your mind.

Okay, you ready? What does this look like when you picture this? Therefore, everyone who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain fell, the rivers rose, and the winds blew and pounded that house, yet it did not collapse because its foundation was on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, the rivers rose, the winds blew, and pounded that house, and it collapsed, and it collapsed with a great crash. Think about this picture. You have two builders. By the way, remember when I told you there were two characters in the Sermon on the Mount? Now you have two builders. Both builders hear the same words of Jesus, right? Both builders are exposed to the same teaching, so the difference is not information, the difference is internalization. One builder hears Jesus' words and does them. The other hears the same words and does nothing, and then the storm comes. Now what's interesting about the storm, so if you think about the storm imagery for a moment as it's raining outside, the storm does not create the foundation

that Jesus is talking about, it reveals it. See, this is interesting, because now we're actually touching on something profound about your destiny, biblically speaking. Most of us think that storms in our life, they're just things that are random, that kind of interrupt the things that we should be doing, right? Jesus says that the storm is an agent that exposes whether or not the Holy Spirit's work of formation, that hidden work, is actually gone deep in you. So that means when the opportunity comes, when trials and struggles come, when suffering comes, or when unexpected change happens, the thing that surfaces to the top is not random, it reveals the transformation that took place on the inside, or maybe the lack of it, do you understand? Why am I going over all of this? Because the entire sermon is showing us the same thing, ladies and gentlemen, Jesus is calling us to deep heart formation by the power of the Holy Spirit. That's what's underneath his teaching in Matthew 6. And by the way, this is not theoretical, friends. Let me show you what happens when this kind of formation is missing, okay? Real quick, in Matthew 12, stay with me, Jesus and his disciples, in Matthew 12, they're traveling, they're hungry,

the disciples are hungry, so they decide to pluck the heads of grain to eat. You remember this story? The Pharisees are there, and they object to it, and they call them out, right? Then Jesus responds by quoting Hosea, this is Matthew 12, seven, listen to this. If you had known what this means, I desire mercy, and not sacrifice, you would not have condemned the innocent. Think about what just happened here. You have Pharisees that know God's word. They know it so well, as a matter of fact, that they teach it to other Jews in the community. And yet somehow they completely miss God in human flesh standing right in front of them. How did that happen? They are completely blind to the actual fulfillment of the scripture that they know so well and they teach to other people. And they condemn Jesus and his disciples for being lawbreakers. The question is, what went wrong with these men? Jesus said they lacked mercy. And because they lacked mercy, they missed the moment entirely. Something was happening, a fulfillment of God's will, and they missed it. God was acting in front of their very eyes and they didn't see it. Do you understand?

That means, are you ready for this? Discernment is not simply something that happens up here, ladies and gentlemen, it's actually moral. Discernment is shaped by your moral formation. It's your character. This is what God is after. This is why Jesus says back in Matthew 6, 33, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. See friends, my concern is that we have reversed this order. What a lot of us do today is, we're not concerned about anything else, we just want the discernment. We want the clarity first. We wanna know what is God's will for my life first. We want the answers. God's word is showing us that it's the other way around. We must become the kind of people who are sanctified. Our instincts have become so trained by obedience to God, obedience to his word, submission to his sanctification of his Holy Spirit, and then discernment will follow from that. Are you with me? We will begin to recognize things that are happening in our lives more quickly. We will be better equipped to know what to do when our life forks into various paths in our future. Amen? If we allow our character to be transformed by Christ. Now, don't misunderstand me, okay?

Because what I'm getting at here, what I'm not talking about is receiving new revelation. Okay, so let me just be precisely theological with you this morning. What I'm not saying is you download the secret blueprint about what's gonna happen next Thursday in your mind. That's not what I'm saying. I'm talking about digesting scripture so deeply it becomes reflex. I'm talking about a heart so trained by the word of God and so submitted to the Holy Spirit of God that when something happens, you don't scramble for the secret blueprint, you respond out of who you have become in the Lord. Amen? When we open God's words, friends, we are not just merely gathering a bunch of information. We are being drawn into communion with the living God. We, over time, as we do this, as we daily get into the word, the Holy Spirit is shaping us through repetition, through obedience, through the slow discipline of prayer and repentance over and over again, and the hidden righteousness that we must practice. And by the way, not just by ourselves in our quiet times, but together as we get together with the brothers and sisters in church. And then, through all of these things, your moral reflexes are strengthened and shaped so that when something happens that comes down the pike, especially something that you were not expecting

in the future, a difficult conversation, a tempting opportunity, right? Or a job opportunity, a potential spouse to marry, a city to move to, a YouTube ministry to start, you know? You don't pause and say, well, I wonder, let me consult the secret blueprint of heaven. You respond out of who you have become in the Lord. That's what the Bible is showing us. Put it this way, just to be clear. The future takes shape around your opportunities. That means that your moral formation leads to unique opportunities that shape your future. So your character shapes your future. Who you are shapes tomorrow. And the real danger here, ladies and gentlemen, is not that we walk through the wrong door, it's that we walk through any door with an unformed heart. Do you understand? Listen, some of you are trying to determine God's will for your life, and it feels like you're getting nowhere. Like I said, I've been there. I've been there too many times. This is a sermon that has spoken to me first before it spoke to you. I know what this is like. Some of you are stressed out and filled with anxiety about the uncertainty of tomorrow. Could the reason be that you have this upside down? Some of you wanna know what God wants you to do tomorrow,

but you're ignoring what he has commanded for you to do today. You have been resisting the Lord. You have been choosing not to submit to his word fully. Today is the day, friends, to let it all go, to stop resisting, to let God conform you into the image of his son. That's God's will for your life. And not just conforming in the obvious ways that people, when they look at you from the outside, can see, but in the quiet ways, the hidden ways that only the father can see. Some of you are resisting. You need to let him change your heart, friends. You need to let him change you to become poor in spirit, to become merciful, to seek mercy for others. Let's be real. Some of you, you have no mercy to give anybody. And when people look at you, they don't really see a difference from the world because like the world, you are holding on to anger, to bitterness, and to pride, and you have no mercy to give anybody. Is that you? In a moment, I'm gonna pray, and we're gonna enter into a time of worship. And all I ask you to do is just let God's word search your heart and pierce your very soul. All right? I wanna give you a moment to be with God and speak to him.

Would you bow your heads with me? So I'm not gonna ask anybody to stand up or raise your hands. Listen, I trust that you know who you are. Why? Because the Holy Spirit is communicating to you right now. Some of you need to confess that you have been trying to secure your life apart from the Father. Some of you have been asking for God to give you clarity, and you're resisting the formation that he has called you to today. So I want you to take a moment before the Lord, and I just want you to talk to him, okay? Maybe just ask him, Father, show me my heart. Father, what have I been trying to control? What have I been trying to control? Where have I been seeking certainty more than faithfulness? How can your word and your Holy Spirit change my heart today? Talk to the Lord, just for a moment. I confess that there are times in our lives where we seek clarity over character transformation. We wanna know the secret blueprint of heaven, but we are resisting the sanctification of the Holy Spirit. Please, Lord, forgive us, change our hearts, shape us to be who you want to be according to your will revealed in your word. We do trust you, Lord, with the future. Help us to obey you today. We thank you in advance, Lord.