But when you think about it,
don't think about it as, wow, we're about to study Thessalonians
or wow, we're about to study Philippians or wow, we're about
to study Romans or wow, we're about to study John or. Because
really, we're looking at Jesus. And if we're not looking at Jesus
in the preaching of the word and something's wrong and I'll
be honest with you, it's usually the preacher. It's usually the
one that's standing and proclaiming things when Christ isn't seen
in what's shared from the word of God, it's because the person
that is looking is not seeing. It's because the person who is
proclaiming can't see what there is within the text to proclaim. And so as I preach week in and
week out, as I teach, as I share my life with some of you and
share the Word with you and you with others, make sure that Christ
is the central message. We don't have to look and find
Christ hidden in the pages of the text. He's there. And as
we started out our time together this morning reading the first
chapter of Hebrews, I want you to know it is through that lens,
through those words, through the English writing of Hebrews
chapter 1, that God opened my eyes and helped me come from
a very, very dark place in my life. Because all around me was
chaos and catastrophe. All around me was a lot of contradiction
to truth. All around me were people who
were coming against me. My own mind came against me. And what I saw there, as I dared
God one day in the floor of my study to show me something that
I knew He would not show me, did not even have an expectation.
In my ignorance and in my rebellion, I said to God, I'm just going
to read a text I haven't read in a long time. Maybe there's
something there I'm missing. And I just turned to Hebrews.
Who reads Hebrews? That's what I thought. Y'all
do, yeah, of course. But as I opened it and I read
that first chapter, I could barely get through verse 5. And I realized
that there was many truths boiled up into that that I had lost
sight of. I'd put my sight on the success of ministry, I'd
put my sight on how I was to work and live for Christ in my
own power and in my own flesh, and ultimately I ended up at
the end of a rope with no knot to hold on to. But the Lord was
faithful to show me that everything that is in all the circumstances
that we live in, good or bad, are for a purpose. That our suffering
is not in vain. And that our journey in this
life is not ours at all, but rather it is Christ's with us. And that we are set apart from
the world and that while we suffer it is not purposeless. And it
doesn't produce just longing and despair and brokenness, but
it produces an energy desiring of glory. What do I mean by that? It produces a passion within
us that puts us in a place of being driven to see the glory
of God more and more. To learn Him more. To enjoy Him
more. To share Him more. To have more
of Christ. And as you think about that today,
this very day, what would the outcome be if you had more of
Christ? Friends, to have more of Christ
means to have less of you. To have more of Christ means
to have less of the world. To have more of Christ means
to have less of sin. The more of Christ means to have
no joy in anything but Him. The more of Christ that you see, the more the world looks like
garbage. And everybody that I've ever
spoken to who would say that in any sense of their body that
they were a believer, that's what they want. I want more of
Jesus. Or worse, I want more of what
Jesus has for me. Why do you say worse? Because
I think what happens is they take that slide, they take that
path that's the easy way, and they look at that benefit of
being in Christ rather than Christ being the benefit. And friends, I'll tell you, the
preaching of God's Word is seeing Christ. One of my favorite verses,
other than John, I try to find a way of sticking 2 Corinthians
chapter 4 verse 6 into almost anything I do. I don't try, but
it happens. Why? Because there's absolute
truth there that has rocked my life. And that in the darkest
moments of my life as a pastor, as a Christian, as a father,
as a husband, as a friend, as a brother, I was looking for
God to do things in such a way that He would not operate. I
was looking for God to give me something that he already had
given me, but I didn't know that it was there because I had not
looked in the right location. And friends, the word of God,
this written text is the only way you will see God, the only
way you will know God, the only way you will be empowered by
God, the only way you can worship God, the only way you can feel
the peace of God is through the scriptures. And it terribly contradicts
everything we know as human beings. It stands in opposition to our
very way of life. It stands against the very nature
of our freedoms and our liberties and our self-will and our self-worth
and our self-esteem. It fights against all of that.
And the Scripture alone is where you'll find everything that you
could ever desire in life. Because the Scripture is God
in the face of Jesus Christ. And I want to focus on that today
in Philippians. Last week we looked at this text. We saw that there were a lot
of things to think about. I actually spoke a little too
long on this idea of thinking. I actually asked a dear brother
this morning, when's the last time you had time to just think
about Christ? I don't know, he says. It's been a while. I'm
working a lot. I'm busy. Why is that? God says through the writing
of Paul to the Ephesian Christians, He says that God has given us
every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms in Jesus Christ.
You know what that means? That you who are in Christ have
everything God has ever had to offer. There is nothing else.
Get it? So within everything in our lives
crumble, our health crumbles, our marriages crumble, our finances
crumble, the world around us just seems to just be in despair.
We, in those moments, have everything that God has to offer, and there's
nothing else that He can give us. For He's infinitely eternal,
ineffable, and immutable, and He cannot add to His eternality. So therefore He's given us the
fullness of all Himself in completeness, and there's nothing else to get. But yet, we still look for it,
don't we? We've got to think about that.
And this is something that I really want to expound upon that. Why do we lust after the world?
Because we fail to see the fullness of God in Christ through the
Word. Why do we long for better days? Because we fail to see
the glory of the destiny of suffering that we have in this life as
preparation for an eternal... Listen, what does Paul say in
2 Corinthians 4? An eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. How do we get beyond that? We
don't. But we look for it. Why do we
look for it? Because we fail to think. We
fail to really understand that thinking is not just in the mind,
but it's through the Word of God. Thinking just on our own
issues, meditating on our philosophies, on our theologies, is not productive. Though those things will occupy
our mind, we measure them and compare them and put them to
death by the Word. And I will tell you something,
church, it baffles me It baffles me. I use the idea and the imagery
of the Word of God for the Christian as the food is to the body, not
because it fits and it works for me, it's because that's what
the Scripture teaches. Jesus Himself uses the very words
of God to fight against His own temptation when the devil tempts
Him with the opportunity to do that which He has the authority
to do. Jesus has the authority to command stones to turn to
bread. He owns the stones. He made the
stones. He owns the molecules. And by
the word of His power, He upholds that as a rock, that it doesn't
just float into radical ions and electrons into the space.
He holds it as a rock. And He has the authority to make
that bread out of a rock and feed His body which was hungry
and was not evil to be hungry. But Jesus responds to the devil
in the wilderness and He says this, that man does not live
on bread alone, but on every word that comes out of the mouth
of God. Friends, I want you to hear this. Why is the Church of Jesus Christ
seemingly so powerless in our culture? Because we live on our
own philosophies and we live in our own practices and we live
behind our own little white picket fences with safety and security,
lurking around and working for our own joys and excitement rather
than laboring and suffering for the glory of Christ and longing
for His Word. Jesus even says to the multitudes
who He fed, in John 6, by miraculous, by miracle. And they stayed up
all night to follow Him. He vanished, supernaturally vanished,
that's why they couldn't follow Him. He vanished among them,
He disappeared among them, and He left off to pray. And they
go down to the boat. Well, he's not here. Where'd
he go? Well, he can't leave town except get in these boats that
he came in. So we'll go stand by the boats. And they stood
by the seashore by the boats with the apostles or the disciples
all night long. And after Jesus didn't come,
the disciples said, well, we just better go. He said to meet
him over there in Capernaum. We just better go. So they go.
They go. We don't know where Jesus is.
Halfway through. They're scared of capsizing.
Jesus appears to them and teleports them and the boat onto dry land
immediately. John chapter 6, it's there. And
then all the other people over there are waiting. They say,
well, we didn't see him. Maybe he snuck out. So they get in the boats
and they go to Capernaum. They see him and they call him teacher.
They say, oh, teacher, how did you get here? When did you get
here? We didn't see you come. It's
an honest question. Jesus rebukes them and says,
you don't seek after me. You don't seek after me. You
don't want what I have for you. You don't want me. You want what
I can give you. You want the food for your stomachs. Your
stomach is your God. Does that sound familiar? We
just read it, didn't we? Friends, I hate to tell you,
but many who claim Christ has their belly as their God, their
flesh as their God. And He commands them, do not
labor for the bread that perishes, but labor for the food or for
the food and the bread that endures to eternal life. I am the bread
that came down from heaven to give life to all men. I am the
bread of life. There's much there. Friends,
the bread of life that you desire so much, you can't have Him without
this Word. You can't have Him without fellowship
around the Word. You can't have Christ without
the Word of God. It's impossible. You can't be
intimate with Christ without Scripture. You can't be productive
for Christ without Scripture. You can't meditate, you can't
pray without the Word of God. You have a go bag in case your
house burns down? You better have a Bible in it.
Or three. I'd like to just disconnect my
whole study and turn it into something that couldn't be destroyed
and just wheel it out after me if something, you know. That'd
be funny. Where's your clothes? Oh, I forgot. My slippers and pajamas in my
library and that'd be fine. But what's most important, more
important than the library is the God word. And friends, there
are places in our world today, and you know this, but we need
to be reminded, there are places in our world today where the
Word of God will cost you your life. If you get caught with
it, you will die. If you get caught sharing it,
you and your family will die. If you get caught distributing
it, they'll kill anybody that ever looked at you. And people
are doing it right now. I looked at the videos online,
you can't help but see them because people share them. and the Mad
Friday, Black Friday stuff, and people fighting over televisions,
and shoving over stuff, and fighting over clothes. And I was reminded as I was watching
all that, and people just struggling to actually hurt each other,
falling over the merchandise, breaking it, then punching each
other in the face to pick up that broken box of merchandise
to take it out. And I thought, wow, how wicked are those people? And then I went, wow, how wicked
could I be? We might not punch and kick,
but we do strive that hard for things. And then I was reminded of that
video that I saw of this group of Chinese ladies in a Bible
study, and there was a zipped up suitcase in the center of
the floor full of Bibles. And the zippers came out, and
they looked like Black Friday. and they wept, and they held
those Bibles close to their hearts and they began to read them.
Friends of mine have done missionary journeys to Thailand with a Han
Chinese vacation, and they've taken thousands of Bibles, because
in Thailand you can distribute them. You can't distribute them
in mainland China at the time. I don't know if you can now or
not. I don't think you can. People would come there for vacation
and they would have a sign that says, free Bible, and they'd
run out. And these people who had plans
and had things to do, they'd get off that boat and they'd
be given that Bible and they'd stop right there and sit for
five and six hours. And when they ran out of Bibles,
the people who were there reading would take those Bibles and they'd
rip them in half and hand them out to other people. I don't think you have to have
a famine in the land for the Word of God for you to starve for
it, but friends, we don't starve for it and we've got plenty. Are you starving for Christ today?
I think we should be. I think every moment of our lives,
we should be starving for Christ. We should have such a ravenous
hunger for intimacy with Jesus Christ, because it's the only
thing we want. Even when we're full with all his fullness, we
want more. And that sounds a little selfish.
It is. But it's not a sinful selfishness,
because to desire Christ, who is ultimately and most eternally
worthy and eternally glorious, worthy all satisfaction, all
praise, all honor, all wealth. It is it is to desire him the
way he is supposed to be desired. So do you desire Christ today
that way? And if you don't, I pray that you would pray. that you
would come to the place where the Spirit of God in you would
convict you and bring you to... You know that's grace? Bring
you to a place where you want to hear from the Lord, where
you want to spend time in the Lord, and your life will be radically
transformed through your intimacy with God's Scripture, with the
Word, with Jesus. And He will give that to you,
beloved. He will give you that desire. And so to the point this
morning, if you look in chapter 4, verse 4, we're going to read
all of this again down through verse 9. And then I want us to
think again on what we talked about thinking about last week.
I love to say that. Rejoice in the Lord always. And
again, I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known
to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Do not be
anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication,
with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the
peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard
your hearts and will guard your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally,
brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just,
whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable,
if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
think about these things. What you have learned and received
and heard and seen in me, practice these things, and the God of
peace will be with you. I want you to hear that again.
Listen to verse 9. What you have learned, and what
you have received, and what you have heard, and what you have
seen in me. Practice these things. And the
God of peace will be with you. And I sort of in a parting shot
dealt with that very poorly this past Sunday. Because we ran out
of time. And I don't want to come back and re-preach all of
that, because we understand what are these things that we're to
be thinking on. We're to put our mind on these things. Ultimately,
they rest in whom? Christ Jesus. That whatever is
excellent, worthy, praiseworthy, honorable, just, pure, etc. All
these things, if they are these things, they come from God. And if it comes from God, it
is a reflection of God. And if it is a reflection of
God, the perfect example and the only image of the invisible
God is Jesus. So if we're to think on these
things, we're to think on these things through the lens of Christ,
ultimately, even if it's an attribute of a friend of ours who is very
benevolent and kind and giving, we are to see those things, think
about these things, honor these things, and respect these things
as something that God is doing. And then ultimately go, wow,
this is the hand of God in this person's life. This is Christ. And then we worship Christ. We
never worship each other. We never worship each other's
fruit. We never worship our own understanding of things. We worship
Christ. We don't worship a set of doctrines. We don't worship the system of
theology. We don't worship orthodoxy through
our denomination. We worship Christ. As all of
these things point to Him, we worship Him. And so Paul commands
us to think about these things. And if you think for a minute,
he goes on then to say, what you have learned and received
and heard. How is that transmitted? How
is it that Paul has come to this really weird close, not close
of this letter, finally, Think about these things and what you've
learned and what you've heard and what you've seen, what you've
received. Practice these things. How do
you practice Christ? How do you practice? What are
some of the things that Paul is talking about just in the
context of this writing? How do you practice suffering? How
do you practice the mind of Christ? How do you practice affection? Yes, there are things that we
could do. I want you to hear this for a second because all
of us are usually, we usually get stuck in the rut of this,
of the pragmatism of living out our faith. And friends, there
is a practical, pragmatic reality of being in Christ. which is
always measured. If we go to 1 Thessalonians chapter
4, maybe we'll flip over there before we're done today. We see
that there is a learning of Christ and then there is an outcome
of that learning. And the outcome of that learning is we don't
have sexual immorality, we don't lie, we press into holiness.
And so we're to practice these things. But how is it that we
practice? You mean to tell me that we're supposed to practice
things that are just? Yes. We're to put into practice
those things which we are to first what? Think about. Which
we are to first reflect upon. Which we are first to remember. And it's not just the fact that
we've learned them. Sometimes we think that learning...
I want you to pay close attention here because it's real easy for
me to lose my train of thought. And in turn, really help you
get lost. But we sometimes think that learning
has everything to do about somebody standing in a teaching position.
And that's just one small aspect of learning. What you have learned
is not only what you hear me say, and I would just say that
it's not even the beginning of learning. The beginning of learning
is when you sit down with the Bible. What you hear me say and
other people like me who might teach from a platform or from
a pulpit, it ought to coincide and agree with what you are learning.
It ought not to be an epiphany. Oh! If you're reading Philippians
during the week, you ought to come here and go, yeah! You know
what? Amen is a sense, in the very sense of it, in Armenian,
in Greek. It means, it is so. So when you
say, Amen, or Amen, you're actually saying it is. You're saying the
truth. A better way of actually translating that into English
is, truly, truly. Anytime you see that. Or if you're
an old King James guy, verily, verily. I always want to row
my boat when I hear that. I don't know why. Oh, that's
merrily, merrily, isn't it? Nothing wrong with it. Just know
what it means. Truly, truly, I say to you, truly, truly, what
you say, pastor, is true. Truly, truly. That's what amen
means. I agree with you. I know that
you are speaking truth. I know that Christ is in those
words. I see Him, truly. There is truth there. I think
about these things. That is pure. That is honorable. That is commendable. That is
praiseworthy. Yes! That's another way of saying
it. So do you think about these things? It's not the beginning of learning
that's from the pulpit or the classroom. The beginning of learning
is to see Christ. You didn't come to church today
to be the... You came as the church. You didn't
come to a worship service, you brought your worship together.
We are worshiping together as the body of Christ. If wind blew
this building away, probably wouldn't help the temperature
any, but if it blew the building away, we would still be the church. We're not coming today to learn,
though we will. We're coming today to agree on
what we know. And more importantly, we come
today to agree on who we know. To be reminded of these things,
to be encouraged in these things, to be equipped, as Paul would
tell the Ephesians, to do the work of the ministry, which is
what? What are the gifts to the church? Those who teach the word
of God. Pastors, teachers, overseers,
people who take the word of God and teach it to others. Friends,
that's you. But you also have to learn. And
yes, there's a higher level of learning that all of us probably
could partake in, but I'll tell you, some of the most zealous,
most perfect, orthodox preachers of the Word of God are those
who are taught by God through His Word amongst the local church. And they don't know the great
theological terms. They teach them, but they don't
know that they're teaching them. And I'm not propagating the idea
that we don't need education, but I believe the body of Christ
ought to learn together. I believe that the church ought
to be the seminary. I believe that we, each other,
should know so much. After we sit under the teaching
of the Word for two or three years, we ought to be so in tune
with the principles and the doctrines and the precepts. We ought to
be so in tune with Christ that anything that comes around that
has the aroma that's not Him, we say, something stinks. Paul
would call that discernment. How do we have discernment? How
do we have wisdom? We've got to learn the Word of
God. We've got to learn Christ. And friends, learning, I could
go on right now because it's a very important thing for me
as a teacher, as someone who cares about your heart, and cares
about your life, and cares about your joy. I want you to know
Christ. Paul's commanding us here. What
you have learned, practice. And so if that's a command, we
better pay close attention not to just skip over it. I'm going
to be loving. That's not the point. You're
going to be loving if you practice what you've learned. And ultimately,
what you've learned is what? To know the mind of Christ, which
is yours in Jesus. Live it. Have it. It's yours. Oftentimes, we have conversations
with people and they always say, well, I just wish I had that
passion. I've just sort of lost my zeal. And the first thing
out of my mouth is, are you in the Bible? Are you in the Scriptures? No,
I just don't have that passion. You don't want anything. You
don't want zeal, you don't want passion, you don't want intimacy
with God if you don't want intimacy with the Word. And there's a
problem, church. There's a problem with us in
this room in those seasons when we don't invest time in our Scripture. or in the Scripture, in our copies
of Scripture, there's a problem. There's a problem with our worship.
There's a problem with our confession. There's a problem with our proclamation
of faith. There's a problem. And we can
blame it on time. We can blame it on busyness.
We can blame it on sickness. But friends, I've yet to meet
a person, unless they were dying, that didn't go to the bathroom,
didn't eat. I've never met a person, no matter
how distant they were from their faith, that didn't go to work,
that had a job. But they don't want to be around
God's people and don't want to be around God's word because they're
in a spiritual slump. You know what that's called?
Rebelliousness. That is laying on our backs in
our home and waking up and going, I have a choice to be with the
people whom Christ has saved miraculously. and hear the Word
of God together, and be encouraged, and weep together, and laugh
together, or just lay in the bed and wallow in my own self-pity.
That's the choice. And it doesn't start there, that's
not the start, that's the outcome of not starting in the Word of
God every day. Fasting, you ever heard of that?
That means you don't eat, you don't drink, or you don't do
something that you normally do. You know why it's a good discipline?
because you don't do those things that you're going to do so you
can read the Bible and pray. That's what fasting is. It's
simple. It's very simple. Fasting doesn't twist God's arm.
It doesn't make the Holy Spirit do anything for you that He's
not already done. Fasting takes your time and puts
it in Christ's hands. So we all have time to be in
the Word of God. Well, my children are in football.
Cancel it. Well, I've got a sewing class.
Quit it. Well, I teach it. Oh. We're turning it into a Bible
study. Hey, ladies. How y'all doing?
I mean, I could see my grandmother doing that. She taught sewing
classes her whole life. And she'd shut that thing down. It'd be
a prayer meeting in 35 seconds. I'm sorry, you put your machines
up. We're not doing that. So we're in trouble. We got problems.
Well, I didn't sign up for this. Well, you're welcome to leave.
I mean, here's your money back. Spend it wisely. That's absurd. No, it's not. I mean, I'm not
saying that's what we do. But do we have that kind of zeal?
Do we have that kind of intimacy? Do we have that kind of urgency?
Are we sweeping our porch over time with Christ? We do. And we've got to learn. And friends,
that's pretty much the focus of what I want to show you here
in this text. If we're going to know the mind of Christ, it
means we've learned it. If we're going to know how to
pray, it means we've learned how to pray. We learn through
hearing. And hearing, when we hear, God
transforms. Salvation comes that way. We've
come to the place where we've received the truth of God. Not
just through our learning, but supernaturally. We've received
the gospel. We've received Christ. Not because
we took Him, because He came. See, that's the difference. Some
of my family's out today because they've got bronchitis. And then
they shared it. Under the barns, they've got
a sick one, a sick daughter. And then they shared a drink
yesterday, so they're probably going to... We're going to pray that
they don't get ill. I mean, I've got text after text after text.
There's people that are ill. You know, they've all received
some kind of virus. And they didn't find it, pick
it up, put it in their mouth. It just came to them. The same
is true for the gospel. The same is true for salvation.
The same is true for the Word of God. The Word of God comes
and it pierces your heart. And when God sends it to you,
you receive salvation. You receive faith. You receive
life. You know Christ. And then your heart is transformed
immediately to pursue Christ, to strive for holiness, to strive
for righteousness. You and I, as we are saved, sitting
here this morning, We have an undercurrent, not even an undercurrent,
a raging current of desire for godliness. A raging current of
desire to assemble together as the church. So many times people
would say, I didn't want to be in fellowship today, whether
it be in a church service or a Bible study or just coffee
at the coffee shop, and they will say to you, I didn't want
to even be here, but I came because I want to be a person of my word.
And the next thing you know, God has ministered to them in
such a way through that fellowship around the Word of God that there's
no common, natural explanation for it. And the peace that that
person now has, guess what? Surpasses all understanding.
Practice these things. You have learned to not forsake
the gathering together as some are in the habit of doing. Practice
it. Practice what? Not forsaking
the gathering together. That not only includes services
and worship time together, but it includes life together as
we're able to meet and greet in the world. Don't forsake it. Don't run to
your worldly buddies. Don't run to the gossip corner
at your office. Don't run to your neighbor who's
going to give you the worldly wisdom. In fact, doesn't the
Proverbs even say that the wisdom of the wicked is stupid? That's what it says. Well, that's
ugly. Well, that's what the Bible says.
Now, I'm not going to walk around and say, well, you're just stupid.
I may think it, but I'm not going to walk around saying it. And
some people have often said it to me. Well, you're just stupid.
Well, you're right. And that throws them off. Really? Oh yeah,
I'm really stupid. You want me to show you what's
really more stupid than me? It's the fact that I think this
is true. And I take them to 1 Corinthians
chapter 1. The foolishness of God is greater than the wisdom
of man. Let's just put that in that term of that word stupid
and we'll move on. The stupidity of God is greater than the wisdom
of man. Now we know that God's not stupid,
but if we were to compare it and say that He was, even His
stupidity, it's a hyperbolic expression, would be greater
than all the wisdom of man. Friends, we don't have that kind
of power if we don't put it into practice. We don't have that
kind of ability if we don't practice that which we've learned. Are
we learning then? I guess is the greatest question.
Are you learning this morning? Are you learning? Did you learn
yesterday? Are you learning Christ? Paul says to the Ephesians church,
don't do these things, don't practice this way, don't live
this way, don't speak this way. Have nothing like this to even
be named among you. Remember those things in Ephesians?
Because that is not how you have what? Learned Christ. Learning Christ is not getting
a list of what to do and a list of what not to do. That'd be
easy. And then we'd still fail. Learning Christ is knowing Him
through the Word of God, intimately, and then through the transformation
of the Holy Spirit, we then produce Christ-likeness. And we go and
we look in the mirror and go, oh my goodness, look at Jesus,
working in my life, I didn't even notice. Wow. But what's
the world tell you to do? Oh, just make yourself a list
and work on these things and then you're right with Christ.
No, you're right with Christ and He produces good works in you before
the foundation of the world He prepared for you. Oh, that sounds
like a little bit of heresy. Ephesians chapter 2, verse 10. John chapter 3. These works have
been carried out in God. Ephesians 2, which God prepared
beforehand for you to walk in. I mean, it's there. And that's
just 2. We could go all the way through Romans 12 and 1 and 2.
Be transformed by the what? Renewing of your mind. not conform
to the world. The world's conformity actually
says for you to work this stuff in your own ability. The stupidity
of Christ, if you will, says that wisdom is truly letting
Christ get the credit. Wisdom is truly submitting to
the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And I use those words very lightly
because in our culture they mean so much. But let's just boil
it to this way and we move on. is knowing Christ works these
things in you. And they are there. Put into
practice what you've learned. Well, see, in the mind, what
we see there in verses 4 through 7, we see some things we've already
visited. We're not going to re-preach
all of it. I want to pull out this particular thing. I want to show
us that Paul is teaching, not just here, but all the way through
this letter, that there is a mind among us, and that this mind
is not just the thinking mind, but it's the spiritual mind.
So that there's a mind that we contemplate, which is our flesh,
that we use, that God has endowed us with some smarts and ability
to understand things. But most importantly, the trueness
of that mind, the trueness of the truth of Christ in our mind
comes from the Lord. Because if He had not opened
our hearts and minds to the truth, we would be working it out in
our own philosophies or rejecting it completely. And working it
out in our own philosophies is actually rejecting it completely.
Even if we get 99% of it correct, it's still no gospel, no Jesus,
no Christ, no life. That's what Paul tells the Galatians
church, the church of Galatians. So as we're working these things
out, we need to understand that the virtue of worship starts
in the vitality of the mind of the believer. That if we're truly
wanting to worship Christ, it starts with the learning of Christ.
It starts with the supernatural infusion of wisdom. It starts
with the Word of God, the black and white and sometimes red letters,
there's not a difference, Christ said them all. Keep that in mind. What Paul says in Romans 1 are
the words of Jesus. He says that. The Word of God,
he tells it to Timothy, is breathed out. All Scripture is breathed
out by God. So all Scripture, every breath
mark in the Greek, is God's breath. Think about it. But in the mind,
the vitality of the mind, the health of the mind as it comes
to learning Christ is from where the virtue of worship comes.
I've already mentioned the Scripture that proves that in Romans chapter
12, verses 1 and 2. It says, I appeal to you therefore,
brothers, by the mercies of God, by the grace of God, by the power
of God, by the gift of God, let's just, whatever we can use there,
by the mercies of God, present your bodies as living sacrifices. Live your lives in practice of
the fruitfulness of the righteousness of Christ who is yours. Which is yours? You are the righteousness
of God. Do you hear those words? And
as we learn the Word of God, all of this stuff should resonate
within our hearts and minds. All of these things should pop
into our hearts. As we're hearing one thing, we
go, wow, I know where that comes from. Wow, I remember that. Even
if you don't know the reference. If you don't know, oh, that's
Ephesians chapter 3 verse... You know that it's God's Word
because you remember hearing it before. You've learned that
principle. You've learned Christ in that
way. And not just about Christ, learning
Christ is not just learning about Him, not facts and figures, but
learning Him in intimacy. It says, to present your bodies
as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your
spiritual worship. So that when we practice, and
even in our learning of Christ, the things that come from learning
are acts of worship. In other words, if we go back
where Paul, I'm in Paul's letters a lot in my mind here, but if
we go back to Paul in Ephesians 1, to the praise of His glorious
grace, we live as an example, as a physical, visible image
of the glorious grace of God. So not just in our affection
toward Him, and in our celebration of Him as worship, but in our
lives as an example of His power as worship. We honor Christ whether
we live or whether we die. In our bodies or in our death,
we honor Christ in our bodies when we live for Christ. You
see that? All the Philippians ought to
be really boiling in your hearts and minds right now. Because
this is how the argument just comes to life. We are to see
the power of God. And friends, this is not a burden
on us. John would tell us, it's not a burden. We aren't to sit
here today and go, oh, I just can't get my life right. Christ
has straightened your life. Christ has straightened your
heart. Christ has straightened your mind. He has made it pure.
He has made it right. That when we are, think Brother
Jesse even put it on Facebook last week, when we have the opportunity
of sin before us, God has given us a way out already. Didn't
you say that? Okay. I was like, I hope he said
it. If he didn't, he did it now.
Isn't that true? If that was not the case, then
how dare the apostles say, practice these things? Now, I know the argument can
be made. The argument can be made, well,
my anger gets ahead of me, I just can't control it. Yes, we can.
Yes, we can. Because Christ can compel us
to control our anger. And friends, I will tell you
this, and I will tell you this, I have the worst temper than
all of you combined. In the core of my flesh, I could
tear this house down with a word. You know, that much anger. Rawr,
like the Hulk. And that was sort of, when I
was a younger man, mm-mm. Don't make me mad. But I can
promise you this throughout my whole life, since I was 15, 14,
up until about my late 20s, I can honestly confess to you this.
is that every time I lost my temper, it was a willful and
purposeful decision. The feelings, maybe not, but
my expression and how I said it and what I did, I was not
out of control. And I don't believe we are either.
And I believe that that's true for every sin we commit as Christians,
that it is a willful decision to reject the joy of Christ.
A willful decision. Practice what we've learned.
And we've learned that Christ, even though he had the authority
and the power and the supremacy to stand up and go, I'm not doing
the cross and just condemn us all, he did it. He gave himself
to be a servant, a slave, and died on a cross innocently, but
took all the guilt and kept his mouth shut. Practice what you've learned.
That's the core of it. That's the core of it. We've
learned Christ. That our lives are a living sacrifice,
as Christ's life was a living sacrifice. We don't have the
authority to subject others to our wrath, to our sin, to our
decision, to our desires. Christ does have the authority
to subject all creation to be under His feet. And as we read
in Hebrews 1 this morning, and in Ephesians 1 we could go there
too, the Bible teaches that everything will be subject to His rule.
Because everything is subject to His rule. But even though
He was God, He became nothing. That's the mind of Christ. We've
learned Christ. The very Gospel, the good news
to our salvation, is because we've learned Christ. Not just
what Christ has done, but intimately learned the heart and the mind
of Christ through the Spirit of God, through the written Word.
so that we can stand here and we know that as Paul says in
Romans 12, but do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed
by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern
what is the will of God, the will that is good and acceptable
and perfect and pure and trustworthy and praiseworthy and lovely and
commendable. Because learning Christ is salvation.
In John 17, Jesus says these exact words. Listen very carefully.
He says, this is eternal life. Hear that. People like to use
John 3.16 as the verse for salvation. It's not. It's the work of God
for salvation. But if we want to know what salvation
is, what eternal life is, Jesus says it verbatim, this is eternal
life, that they know you, the one true God, and the Son whom
you have sent. Period. Do you have eternal life? Do
you know Jesus Christ, the Son who was sent by the one true
God? Do you know God as Father? Do you know Christ as Savior? Do you know them? Many people
say, I know Christ. I know Christ. I know Christ.
He is Lord. He is Lord. He is Lord. But the
Bible, Jesus Himself said, many will say unto me, Lord, Lord. But I will say to them what? Get away from me. I don't know you. Learning Christ is eternal life,
knowing Christ is salvation, so we need to learn and receive
and hear and see. Part of seeing the apostles,
part of seeing our lives as the work of the Spirit is manifest,
part of seeing forgiveness in calamity, part of seeing joy
in Christ, part of seeing all of these great things that are
impossible for men to do and women to do, is for us to see
and say, wow, that's the work of Christ. We've learned Christ's
work by seeing it. that it affirms and we can say
amen to what we've heard in Scripture as we see it in life. That's
why the testing of the saints is so imperative. That's why
the discipline of the church is so commanded, so that we who
are in Christ actually are walking in Christ together. We forgive
those when they fail, but when they continue in sin, we kick
them out of our lives, not our meetings. Church discipline doesn't remove
you from the church role and from the list and from the activities. Church discipline removes you
from the people for good until you come to Christ. Because it is the work of Christ
who produces the reality of salvation. And learning Christ is salvation. Learning Christ, also according
to this text here, is peace. Very beginning of this letter.
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus
Christ. All throughout, and even in this
very section that we've been in, the peace of God that surpasses
all understanding. We learn. Christ. We learn the Father. We learn
the practice of prayer. We learn and then not only do
we learn it and we know it and we understand it and we receive
it and we hear it, but we see it and we put it into practice. We learn and the peace of God
is eternal in us because we've learned Christ. We're not just
knowing that this is true. We are examples of its truth.
Are you an example of that? Do you have the peace of Christ
this morning? Or are you just faking it? In the business world,
when you're trying to sell widgets, faking it until you make it,
it works. You can climb out of a cardboard
box and clean up in a bathroom and come out and look like a
million bucks. But fans, you can't fake peace. If you don't have the peace of
Christ, You might not have learned Christ. The Bible tells us, the Word
of God teaches us very clearly that the peace of God will surpass
all understanding and that it will guard our hearts and that
it will guard our minds in Christ Jesus. So if we go into our lives
and we cannot keep our minds guarded, and we cannot keep our
hearts guarded, and we say, where is this peace? What must I do
to get this peace? We must learn Christ. We must
learn that Christ made peace with God the Father through the
life that He lived and the death that He died. And we have peace
eternally and eternal life because He's been raised from the dead.
Do you see that? But how, oh how do I make that
really mine? You just have to believe in Christ. You have to believe all that
Christ is. You have to believe in every fiber of Christ's existence.
You have to see Christ and know Him. You have to be given the
eyes of faith and the heart of hope and the mind of peace. You
have to have Christ. And He most importantly has to
have you. And I'm sorry that I can't give you a quick six-point
outline on how to make that absolutely a reality in your life, but there
is no such thing. If there were such steps to salvation,
then we all could stand before God and beat our chest and say
to God, we did that which was required of us. To which Jesus
has already spoken in Mark's Gospel. And He says, you don't
get a reward for doing what's required of you, but you surely
get recompense for doing what's not required. So even as we obey all the law,
we still disobey all the law because we've broken a piece
of it. There's never been a man that ever walked this earth except
Jesus Christ, the God man, who has loved the Lord as God with
all of his heart, mind, soul, strength. There's never been a human being
except Jesus, the God man, who has not put other gods before
God. And according to Paul's teaching
to the Philippians, Jesus, though he was God, did not put himself
as God before the father. But he made himself nothing. We think about these things.
Learning Christ is peace. Learning Christ is wisdom. Paul
has already argued that there is a prayer that he prays, and
he prays that the manner of life that we live would be worthy
of the call and the gospel of Jesus Christ, so that he may
hear of us standing firm in one spirit, that he may hear of all
that we do, and that as our enemies line up against us, and as the
world comes and crashes down around us, that we would not
have fear. but that the peace of God that surpasses all understanding.
See, Paul should just like reiterate all this. He put this stuff in
the wrong place. If he just put it over here, well, if we'd read
it every day, we'd see it in its entirety. You can't learn Christ in pieces,
verse by verse, every Sunday for 50 weeks. Scripture says that learning
Christ is our wisdom. It gives us the ability to discern
what is good, to know what is holy, to know what is pure and
righteous, to know Christ in such a way that the power of
God rests upon us, that we are filled with all this fullness
and that we desire Him more and more and more. Wisdom. He says the same thing to the
Corinthians. He says first that learning Christ is wisdom. He
says in 1 Corinthians 1.30, And because of Him you are in Christ
Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God. Jesus became to us
wisdom from God. Righteousness and sanctification
and redemption. So that as it is written, let
the one who boasts, boast in the Lord. We boast in the Lord
because we don't have wisdom of our own. We don't figure out
Jesus. He comes to us and gives us wisdom. He is our wisdom. Learning is wisdom. Learning
Christ is wisdom. And friends, the reality of it
all is this, is that learning Christ is power. And that's what
all of us are really longing for. It's back to where I started
in this sermon. Learning Christ is power. Learning
Christ is the power to be saved. Learning Christ is the power
to be sanctified. Learning Christ is the power to worship. Learning
Christ is the power to have peace. Learning Christ, and though we've
learned Him today, we learned Him yesterday. We learned Him
yesterday and we want to learn Him tomorrow. We want to learn
Christ. We want to be intimate with His Word every day. His
mercies are new today, not yesterday. Yesterday's bread is on the discount
shelf. Last week's holy moment is last
week's. Oh, look what I did for you,
Lord. I kept your talent safe. Nobody stole it. It's a little
bit of an abuse of that text, but think about it for a minute. Friends, learning Christ is power.
Paul would tell the Corinthians, for the Jews demand signs and
the Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. Oh Paul,
how is it that you can suffer these These Greeks, how is it
that you can suffer in prison like this and continue this ridiculousness
about Jesus being raised from the dead, who was God and came
to earth as a human being? How can you do that? Why would
you suffer this way? Christ and Him crucified is all
I know. I can't preach anything else to you. All your wisdom,
he would tell the Greeks, all these gods that you've created
and the only one you got right is the one you do not know. His
name is Jesus and he lived and he died on the cross and he'd
been raised from the dead. You better believe in him because
none of these other gods, none of this other wisdom is going
to get you to eternal life. And most of them scoff. People want us to be able to
give them answers. There's a whole section of Christendom that's
known as apologetics, and it's very beneficial. Peter even says
to always be prepared to give a reason for the hope that you
have in gentleness and respect. But through the last few centuries,
apologetics have taken a steep dive into worldliness and psychology
and philosophy. And friends, it's no room for
it there. Christ is the wisdom. I don't believe the Bible, one
would tell me just three weeks ago. I don't believe Paul and
anything he wrote, but the apostles affirmed Paul. So what does it
say about them? Peter himself, who most people
always got the keys of heaven. We won't talk about that. He
said, to the Hebrew people, what about that letter that was written
to you already, that Paul wrote to you? That's why I think Hebrews,
if it isn't Paul's, it was his idea. It was his commission. The Apostle Paul wrote to you.
Paul came to us. And we were scared, but the Spirit
of the Lord through the prophet came and told us he was coming. And we received Him as a brother.
He is an apostle. The Word of God teaches us. People
say, well, I don't believe the Word of God. Well, friends, the
only thing I can tell you is that the Bible says about that,
that you do believe in the Word of God. The Bible says you have
learned truth, but you suppress it with unrighteousness. The
Bible says, I don't want to hear about the Bible where there's
nothing else for us to talk about. That's a proper apologetic. It
doesn't matter if there's 25,000 copies within the first hundred
years and all this kind of stuff in different languages and nine
continents and 26,000. I mean, it doesn't matter. That's interesting.
It gets me excited to go, wow, there's a lot of it. The Word
is really out there. It's very replete. But it's not going to
cause you to have faith in Christ. It's not even going to cause
you to want to read it. In fact, very few lost people
want to read the Bible. That's why it's important that
we proclaim it everywhere we can and every opportunity that
we have. That's why I believe the public reading of Scripture
is an extreme mandate of the Word of God. If we're to make
disciples, if we're to proclaim the Gospel, if we're to preach
the Word in season and out of season, it's in season on Sunday
morning. It's out of season on Monday
afternoon. Somebody gets a little loud in
a restaurant, and ask a question, and then we get a little loud
in the restaurant. When I get a little loud in a restaurant,
because I'm excited about the Word, and you hear a shhh, and you
turn around and you see a chairman of deacons from a local church
shushing you, and you want to go over there
and just go, but you don't. But you don't. You go, oh, I'm
so sorry, and you just keep doing it. Let's take it outside. Let's go somewhere else. Why
would we do such radical things? Because it is the only answer
we have. Christ is power. The Jews demand
signs and the Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified. A stumbling block to the Jews
and stupidity to the Gentiles. Foolishness, but to those who
are called, both Jew and Greek. Did you hear that? To those who
are called by God to hear, when they hear, Christ is the power
of God and the wisdom of God. You want power in your life?
Christ is your only answer. You want wisdom to know how to
deal with living in this world apart, set apart for Christ? The gospel of Christ is your
only answer. Jesus is your wisdom. Jesus is your power. And it will
look a lot like the lives of Paul. That's why three times
he says just in this letter, imitate me, follow me, remember,
put into practice what you've seen me do. So you want some
practical application for learning Christ? Then live Christ. How do I live Christ? Well, when
you find yourself suffering, in the prison of your own mind,
in the pity of your own despair, in the frustration of your own
bound up desires that don't go their way, then you rejoice. There's an example. When everything that you've ever
worked for, even for the sake of the gospel, crumbles to pieces,
just rejoice. And pray that God would use all
the crumbling of everything that you ever thought impossible to
lose for the purpose of glorifying Him in your life. And you know what's really amazing
about it? We don't have to understand all
the details of what it looks like. Here's something that could
help us. We don't have to go, oh, see,
God's doing this, and He's going to work it out like this, He's
going to put it... He may not ever do any of it. Because what makes it foolishness
and what makes it peace that surpasses understanding? Learning
Christ is so supernaturally amazing because we can say, I don't know. How are you able to do that?
I don't know. Christ has done it. I want to
have that peace. Then let me share with you Christ.
Let me share with you this good news of Jesus. And God does it. I've taken hundreds
of hours of counseling courses and preparation for counseling
in my entire life. Counsel, counsel, counsel, counsel,
counsel. And then when I got into the depths of despair and
depression, and God's Word in Hebrews 1 just woke me up. My
counseling is different. And I don't need 25 years. is power, is wisdom. And I'm not knocking good counsel,
therapy, doctors, medicine, you've got sickness in your lungs. I'm
not knocking that kind of stuff, but I'm telling you, to be able
in your mind and in your heart to have the peace of God, there
is no man or woman who can lay out the details for you. It is
Christ. It is Christ alone. Paul would say to the Thessalonians,
Finally then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus,
that as you receive from us how you ought to walk and please
God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. For
you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.
For this is the will of God, your sanctification, that you
abstain from sexual immorality, that each of you know how to
control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion
of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God, that no one
transgresses and wrongs his brothers in this matter because the Lord
is an avenger of them in all these things, as we told you
beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us
for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore, whoever disregards
this, Disregards not man but God who gives His Holy Spirit
to you." Now, let me relate that and then park it. In that little
tiny section of clothes of 1 Thessalonians, which we'll be in in months to
come, Paul uses four or five times a reference to the learning
of Christ, to the learning of the practical reality of your
faith, to the reality of watching them live and then emulating
Christ through their teaching. How do we see Paul? We've got
his letters. How do we see Christ? We have
the apostles' letters. We see Christ when we see the
apostles, when we see the Word, we see Christ, And so, we've
received it, we know how we ought to walk, so that when we have
the wisdom to see that are we thinking correctly, are we living
correctly, are we speaking correctly, are we doing these things, and
the word correctly is not even the right word for it, are we
honoring Christ in our lives and every fiber of our existence?
The answer will always be no, but the reality should be that
we are striving and pressing into the holiness that we are
called because it is our desire. And then the answer of how we
do it is to continually keep our eyes on the One who is our
righteousness. We look at Him. Friends, we can't
look Christ in the face while we sin. We can't look Christ
in the face while we have self-pity. Oh, He doesn't understand our
temptation. Yes, He does. He doesn't understand our pain.
No, His pain is greater than our pain. He doesn't understand
our struggle. Hebrews says, none of you have
ever struggled to the point of shedding blood. Have you ever
been so anxious, in such despair, in such fear, in such emotion,
that your blood vessels popped in the pores of your skin? No,
neither have I. You know what Christ faced in
the Garden of Gethsemane? the full reality of understanding
the absolute eternality of the wrath of the Father, and that
He was about to experience it. He knew what death was. And He
stayed. And nothing we experience in
this life, beloved, will ever come close to that. As a matter
of fact, even in the greatest of martyrdom, Christ is there. In the greatest of anxieties,
Christ is near. The Lord is near. And that is the point of this
text. I know it's taken me three weeks to get it all out, but
that is where this text rests for you and for me. And so from my heart, I pray
that the outcome of understanding all of this would be evident
in your lives. What is it? Rejoice. Practice rejoicing. Don't complain. Don't harbor resentment. Don't
be unforgiving. Rejoice. and learn and then practice
what you learn. Oh, I want this peace and today
I feel refreshed. Friends, if this refreshing,
if this peace is to be yours tomorrow, you must be in Christ's
Word tomorrow. You must be about Christ's people
tomorrow, not just today. And I implore you, please do
not make a habit of forsaking the word and forsaking the local
church and assembly, because you will become weak and you
will lose your joy. Let's pray. It is glorious. that You've saved us in spite
of us. You brought us to this place
to understand You and to see You. Lord, it sounds so simple,
but yet so convoluted at times, Lord, that my own mind struggles
with the application. But at the end of our try, You give us the faith to see
Christ for who He is and to know Him and to live in Him. At the
end of our efforts, you pick up those broken pieces and place
them back in your line, back in your hand, upright. At the end of our day, when we've
done all we could and gotten it right, it's still not enough.
We must have you. We must have Christ. You must
have your power in us. So help us to rest in Christ.
And help us to walk in Christ. Help us to have a heart for your
word and affection. The affection of Christ for each
other. So that as we pray for each other, we know that others
are praying for us, that we might walk with Christ. and to truly
eat and devour and be satisfied in Him. And we thank You for
such truth. Truly, truly, we say these things
to You. In Christ's name, Amen.