TITLE: “Your worth before God”

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Our text for this morning is from the Gospel lesson just read, with focus on the words, Are you not of more value than they?

Children of the heav’nly Father Safely in His bosom gather;

Nestling bird nor star in heaven Such a refuge e’er was given. (HS98 #888)

Jesus in our text compares the value of your life to the value that God places over the things of this world. The lilies of the field, the grass, the birds of the air, all of these things are a part of God’s creation, which he continues to care for each and every day. None of these things spend an ounce of time worry about how they are going to make ends meet, what is going to happen tomorrow, or in trying to change God to fit what they want for the future. God simply takes care of them. In His own time and in His own way, to be sure, but God takes care of them just as surely as the sun comes up each morning.

You and I, though, we often do not have the faith that the things of this would seem to have in God’s goodness and mercy. We worry. We worry about money, about time, we worry about our marriage, about the children, about school, about work, about play, we even worry about the football game that starts in about 2 ½ hours! It is amazing the things that we find to worry about here in this life.

Now it is easy to sit back and kind of laugh at worry, but worry and its cousin, doubt, can eat away at you like a cancer. They can be crippling and paralyzing. If you think of your own life, it doesn’t take much thinking to start realizing how tenuous and just plain shaky life is sometimes. Life is fragile, and it doesn’t take much to upset the balance.

But the more time we spend worrying about these things we cannot control, the less time we spend simply living the lives God has given us, and trusting that our heavenly Father is going to take care of us through the good times and bad.

Our texts for this Sunday give us a perfect example of this doubt and faith question in the widow of Zarephath. Elijah goes to a widow in the town of Zarephath and asks for a little water and bread to eat. She replies: “As the LORD your God lives, I do not have bread, only a handful of flour in a bin, and a little oil in a jar; and see, I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it, and die.”

This is not exactly a positive outlook on life. From her perspective, there was simply no way that God could get her out of this mess. She could not see past her harsh circumstances to see that God would take care of her through both the good times and the bad times that she was facing. Now if you remember the rest of the story, you remember that God provided for her and gave her a bin of flour and a jar of oil that would not run out. He took care of her, just as He will take care of you.

Now Jesus uses an even stronger comparison to show you how much God loves you and wants only what is best for you. He points us to the birds of the air, the lilies of the field, and the grass and demonstrates that God continues to take care of these things. Now, says Jesus, are you not of more value than they?

The answer, of courses, is a resounding yes! God loves all of His creation. No question about it. But His love for you is greater than His love for the things of the earth. You are, as Jesus put it, of more value than they. Why? Because you are created in God’s image. You have the very spark of divinity in you. To be sure, it was marred and lost in the fall. But you are baptized. You are one of His children. You are a child of the heavenly Father. That means that you are worth more than gold or silver. You are worth more than anything else in the whole world. You are priceless in God’s sight.

This is what Jesus is really getting at in the end of our text when he says Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. You see, God’s image has been placed on you in your Baptism. It is that righteousness of God, given to you by Jesus Christ, that makes you who you are. When we worry, when we doubt, when we put all of the “What ifs” scenarios before our eyes and take a doom-and-gloom view of the world, it is as if Jesus didn’t die on the cross to forgive your sins!

Now don’t lose me, here. I know we all have doubts. Heaven knows that we all have doubts! That isn’t the point. The point is that God promises to take care of you, and that you don’t need to worry about the future. You are of more value to Him than the whole world. That is the level of God’s commitment to you. He is so committed to you that He was willing to send His Son over to death itself so that you might live. Now that is some serious commitment. That is God’s love in action.

Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Jesus Christ is the Kingdom of God. His righteousness is all of His work for you on the cross. It is that righteousness of God that He gives to you in His Holy Sacrament. For it is here that doubt gives way to faith. It is at the Altar that God’s mercy pours out of the cup and into your mouth for everlasting life. You don’t have to be afraid. God’s love for you never fails, never grows weary. His love for you knows no end. So it is that we can cry out with the hymnist:

Though He giveth or He taketh, God His children ne’er forsaken;

His the loving purpose solely To preserve them pure and holy. (HS98 #888:4)

In Jesus’ holy name. Amen.