Simple Sermon Outlines

The Anxious Pursuit of Enough
By: Clay Gentry

From the time humanity left Eden, every man has carried a burden that weighs on his mind, starting the day he gets married: “Can I provide enough for my family?” When Jesus stepped up on the Mount and said, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat... or what you will put on,” (Mat 6:25), He was looking into the anxious eyes of men who worried that a bad harvest or lean catch, or not being hired for a day, meant their families would go hungry and poorly clothed. While our diets and wardrobes have changed, the anxiety of enough hasn’t. So, men, let’s hold up Jesus’ words as a mirror to our modern lives this morning and learn to be empowered by His provision.

1. The Provision Mandate:

a. God places the weight of work and the provision of food on the shoulders of the man. | Gen 3:17-19
i. Yet, God Himself provided the man and woman with clothes. | Gen 3:20-21

b. Paul doesn’t mince words about a man’s duty to work and provide for his own. | 1 Tim 5:8

c. God uses our appetite to drive our labor, but Satan uses it to drive our anxiety. | Pro 16:26; Ecc 4:4

2. The Anxiety Trap:

a. Jesus doesn’t randomly pick food and clothing; He’s drawing on the biblical history of God supplying these two specific needs. | Mat 6:25-30; cf. Gen 28:20-22; Deu 8:3-4; Isa 58:6-7; Luk 3:11

b. Jesus isn’t silencing all anxiety; rather, He’s redirecting your concern to His provision.

i. It’s futile to be anxious about stuff, even necessities.
1. Jesus’ rhetorical questions expose the pointlessness of worrying over stuff. | vv. 25, 26, 27, 30
2. When a man operates out of anxiety over stuff, he behaves like a spiritual orphan. | vv. 31-32; Psa 37:23-25; Heb 13:5-6
3. Wives/Children, the best gift you can give your husband/father is the gift of contentment. | 1 Tim 6:8

ii. It’s useful to be anxious about people. | 1 Cor 7:32-35; 2 Cor 11:28; Php 2:19-20 (Grk.)
1. Worry about the souls, character, and the spiritual alignment of your family, not their provisions. | Eph 5:25-31; 6:4; 1 Pet 3:7

c. Holy hunger drives a man to pray and work hard with a quiet trust in God’s sovereignty.

3. The Abundance Trap:

a. Jesus’ audience worried about starvation; with our abundance, we worry about status.

b. An abundance easily blinds a man to his daily dependence on God. | Pro 30:8-9; Luk 12:13-21
i. With a stocked pantry and an overflowing closet – we’re not anxious, we’re forgetful.

c. The greatest gift a man can give his family isn’t stuff, but a Kingdom First priority. | vv. 33-34
i. Far too often, men are so anxious about providing for their family’s lifestyle that they abandon their family’s spiritual life.

Since the beginning, Satan has told men that the answer to their anxiety about providing is found in the exhausting pursuit of enough. But Jesus stands on the Mount this morning and tells us we’ve been measuring our manhood by the wrong standard. Yes, work hard, sweat with dignity, but rest with absolute confidence that the God who feeds the birds and clothes the grass will provide enough. Men, your family can survive in a smaller house or wear lesser brand clothes, but they won’t survive a man who provides everything for their temporal life while providing nothing for their eternal souls. So men, drop the panic of the spiritual orphan, step into the peace of a son, and seek first the Father’s Kingdom for your sake and your family’s.

Sluggards: Wishers Not Workers
By: Clay Gentry

The Bible doesn’t call the lazy person a “lion taking a nap” or an “eagle resting its wings.” It calls them a sluggard. A slug is a common name for any apparently shell-less terrestrial gastropod mollusc. A creature that consumes much, moves little, and leaves a trail of slime everywhere it goes. The tragedy of the sluggard isn’t a lack of vision; it’s the hallucination that wishfulness can replace work, that a harvest is reaped where no seed was sown. He craves a full life while living like a slug. But God didn’t design your soul to crawl in the mud of “what-if;” He designed it to thrive in the diligence of “what-is.” To find the satisfaction we crave, we must move past the slimy trail of our excuses and step into the fields of faithful labor.

1. The Sluggard in Proverbs:

a. Wisdom paints a humorous, yet haunting, portrait of the sluggard.

b. He’s married to his bed; He has a hard time getting “up and at it.” | 6:6-11; 26:14

c. Once up, he can’t find the strength to do anything constructive. | 19:24; 24:30-34; 26:15

d. Imagines unreasonable fears to rationalize unreasonable laziness. | 22:13; 26:13

e. Considers himself wiser than all others. | 26:16

f. He’s a burden to anyone who depends on him. | 10:26

g. Because of his ways, he’s headed for serious trouble. | 13:4; 15:19; 20:4; 21:25

2. The Sluggard’s Cravings:

a. “The soul* of the sluggard craves and gets nothing…” | Pro 13:4a

b. The sluggard has needs and desires, but he refuses the means to satisfy them - work.

c. So, he “gets nothing.” Either by his own hand or by others.’ | cf. Pro 20:4; 2 Ths 3:10

d. The soul-rot of constant desire without fulfillment leads to bitterness and envy.

3. The Sluggard’s Shadow:

a. Sluggardliness is a spiritual condition we’re all susceptible to.

b. Spiritual: They want the “peace of God” but refuse the practices of personal devotion.

c. Relational: They want closeness, without the cost of sacrificial investment.

d. Evangelical: They want packed pews but make excuses to avoid proclaiming the gospel.

e. Instructional: They want meatier teaching but aren’t willing to do the work required to digest it.

4. The Diligent are Satisfied:

a. “While the soul* of the diligent is richly supplied.” | Pro 13:4b

b. The diligent person works hard and intentionally. They reap because they sow.

c. Spiritual: They train themselves “for godliness” for this life and the next. | 1 Tim 4:6-10

d. Relational: They pay the price of self to get to the prize of us. | Php 2:1-4

e. Evangelical: They pray, then go labor in the field for a harvest of souls. | Mat 9:35-38

f. Instructional: They’re “nobel-minded” students of the Word. | Act 17:10-12

The “rich supply” promised in Proverbs 13:4 isn’t a reward for the “lucky” – it’s the harvest of the diligent. The only thing missing is the sowing. In your Spiritual life: Stop waiting for a lightning bolt of holiness to strike. In your Relationships: Stop waiting for the other person to change first. In your Witness: Stop fearing the “lion in the street.” God has given you the seed, the soil, and the strength. The only thing missing is the sowing. God has given you the seed, the soil, and the strength. Don’t leave here today with a heart full of cravings and a life full of nothing. Step out of the slime of the someday and into the work of the today. Pick up the shovel, grip the plow, and trust that the God of the harvest will satisfy your soul.

* Or “appetite” as in Pro 13:4 NIV (twice); same word, H5315 as in Pro 16:26