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Elements City Church

Sermon on the Mount - Week 9 - Faith and Anxiety

The Sermon on the Mount is the most famous sermon Jesus ever preached. It derives its name from the place where Jesus preached it; a mountainside that acted as a natural amphitheater along the shores of Galilee. The Sermon on the Mount, preached to ordinary people, covers a wide range of topics like prayer, fasting, money, worry, forgiveness, anger, lust, judging others, and more. But the theme that unites it all is Jesus explaining the heart of God behind His given Law. It is one of the most challenging biblical texts to interpret properly because the Sermon goes far deeper than promoting external obedience to God’s moral imperatives or simple behavior modification. Every line of the Sermon goes to the heart of discipleship. The Sermon offers a clear understanding of what a blessed life that is pleasing to God looks like from the inside out. What Jesus taught often runs counter to mainstream thinking, but every lesson is brimming with heavenly wisdom and practical instruction that leads us into a flourishing life.

Locations & Times

1825 N Alvernon Way, Tucson, AZ 85712, USA

Sunday 5:00 PM

Thanks for joining us!

Whether you're on-site or online, we are praying that tonight will be an encouragement to your soul. May God whisper to you and help you in taking your next steps in a journey with Him. If you're new, we'd love to have you fill out our connection card.

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It's here in the Sermon on the Mount -- found in Matthew 5-7 -- that King Jesus gives us a radical picture of what life in His Kingdom looks like. And it’s our hope that, as we meditate on Jesus’s words, we might become people who more closely follow His Way and experience a life that truly flourishes in the process.

“I think the Sermon is a piece of wisdom teaching from Jesus that invites people into true human flourishing through wholeness centered on God and his coming kingdom. Jesus’s Sermon invites us to see the world in a certain way and to be in the world in a certain way that accords with God’s nature, will, and coming reign upon the earth; in short, “righteousness” (cf. Matt 5:20). It is a call to faith‐based discipleship in Jesus, the Son of God.”
- Jonathan T. Pennington

The Sermon so far:
Beatitudes (Matt 5:1-12)
Salt and Light (vs. 13-16)
How to Have Kingdom Righteousness in Following the Law (vs. 17-48)
How to Have Kingdom Righteousness in Practicing Your Faith (Matt 6:1-21)

Tonight:
How to Have Kingdom Righteousness with Your Possessions (Matt 6:19-34)

We are made for one thing:
to know and enjoy and glorify God.

Philippians 4:4

Satan’s strategy is not to convince us that God is not good or His Scripture is not true.

Satan’s strategy is to distract from the one thing by distracting you with many things. Distraction is the great enemy of your devotion.

Matthew 6:19-23

Matthew 6:24

We cannot preach the Prince of Peace when we are overcome by anxiety.

Anxiety is:
Unnecessary (vv. 25-30)

Matthew 6:25-30

"The man who feeds his heart on the record of what God has done in the past will never worry about the future."
- William Barclay

Anxiety is:
Unnecessary
Unworthy (vv. 31-33)

“The solution, then, to the anxiety-about-money problem is to set one's heart and mind to seeking God's way of being in the world and his coming reign, which promises to result in all of one's needs being truly met.”
- Jonathan T. Pennington

Anxiety is:
Unnecessary
Unworthy
Unfruitful (vs. 34)

Our problems are not the biggest problem.

Our anxieties about our problems are our biggest problem.

Philippians 4:6

A majority of doctors today are now telling their patients to meditate and focus on gratitude to overcome their anxiety.

“The secular world is stumbling upon a path that has been ours in Christ Jesus all along and it is time for us to walk it.”
- Ben Stuart

God doesn’t want us to regulate or sanitize our prayers.

Many of us are taking issues to the world that we were meant to take to the Lord.

1 Peter 5:7

Psalm 55:22

We are invited to cast our cares to the Lord!

He’s strong enough to carry them,
and He’s loving enough to want to.

Philippians 4:7

Philippians 4:8

Don’t just empty your mind.
Fill it with God’s Word.

Philippians 4:9

So I release my worry,
I embrace His Word, and then
I engage His work in the world.

The remedy to distraction is
devotion to Jesus.

The remedy to anxiety is
intimacy with the Almighty.

Thanks for partnering with us!

Thank you for enabling us to be the Church in our city! Your gifts help fuel the mission of Elements City Church, as well as our capacity to share His love with as many as we can. You help us bring the HOPE and LIGHT of Jesus to our city! You can give online at the link below or through the Elements app.

http://elementscitychurch.org/give

Whether you joined us on-site or online, thanks for being with us tonight!
May you have a blessed week ahead!

Join us next week as we continue our series in the Sermon on the Mount, as well as an ice cream social after service. Make plans to be there!

Be sure to check the Elements app for all of our upcoming events.

We look forward to gathering again next weekend!